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SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In preparation, and will be published shortly.
ENGLISH PORCELAIN.
With numerous Illustrations.
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE
A HANDBOOK TO THE WARES MADE IN
ENGLAND DURING THE SEVENTEENTH
AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES AS
ILLUSTRATED BY SPECIMENS
IN THE NATIONAL
COLLECTIONS.
BY
A. H. CHURCH,
M.A., OXON., PROFESSOR
OF CHEMISTRY IN THE ROYAL
ACADEMY OF ARTS IN LONDON.
WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS.
Published for the Committee of Council on Education
BY
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED, 1t, Henr,etta Street,
1884.
CONTENTS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
Origins and Migrations of Ceramic Inventions
CHAPTER II.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY IN ENGLAND.
Ancient British — Romano-British — Anglo-Saxon — Mediaeval — Tudor —
Jacobean
CHAPTER III.
EARLY SLIP WARES.
Wrotham Ware— Toft and his Contemporaries and Successors— Moulded
Dishes- -Slip Tombstones 22
vi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
VARIEGATED WARES.
PAGE
Marbled Ware— Combed Ware— Agate Ware— Tortoiseshell Ware . . 29
CHAPTER V.
LAMBETH DELFT WARE.
Candlesticks — Wine-bottles — Coloured and Painted Delft — Dishes —
Pill-slabs 35
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY STONEWARES.
D wight of Fulham— Tlace of York 43
CHAPTER VII.
ELERS' WARE.
John Philip Elers— Red Ware— Introduction of Salt-glazing— John and
Thomas Astbury 47
CHAPTER VIII.
WHITE STONEWARE.
Salt-glazed White Ware of Staffordshire— Its Origin, Forms, Decoration
— Notable Examples and Collections 53
CHAPTER IX.
NOTTINGHAM STONEWARE.
Its Characteristics — Notable Examples
65
CONTENTS.
vii
CHAPTER X.
BRISTOL AND LIVERPOOL DELFT.
Two Delft Works at Bristol— Dated Pieces— Style and Decoration— PAGE
Liverpool Tiles— Plaques and Bowls 67
CHAPTER XI.
WEDGWOOD WARE.
Influence of Josiah Wedgwood on English Ceramics— Queen's Ware-
Egyptian Black Ware — Jasper Ware 75
CHAPTER XII.
TURNER AND OTHER IMITATORS OF WEDGWOOD.
John Turner— William Adams— Palmer— Neale -Elijah Mayer— Hollins
— Spode — Wood — Davenport
CHAPTER XIII.
STAFFORDSHIRE FIGURES.
Wedgwood— Voyez— Ralph Wood— Walton— Salt 99
CHAPTER XIV.
LEEDS AND OTHER YORKSHIRE POTTERIES.
Leeds— Rockingham— Don— Ferrybridge— Mexborough . ... 103
CHAPTER XV.
SOME MINOR POTTERIES.
Ring's Bristol Ware— Brislington Lustred Ware— Isleworth— Hounslow
-Jackfield— Herculaneum — Mortlake— Newcastle— Sunderland-
Swansea — Yarmouth
109
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
M.P.G.— Museum Practical Geology. B.M.— British Museum. H.W.-Willett Collection.
b.K.M. South Kensington Museum. S.C.— Schreiber Collection.
fig.
1. -
2. -
3- -
4- -
5-
6. -
7. -
8. -
9--
10. -
11. -
12. -
13. -
14. -
15-
16. -
17. -
18. -
19. -
20. -
21. -
22. -
23. -
24. -
25-
26. -
27. -
28. -
-Sepulchral Urn : Ancient British
-Vase of Glazed Slip Ware : Remano- British ^.
-Pitcher of Green Glazed Earthenware : Early English
-Pitcher with Applied Ornament : Early English ...
-Glazed Tile: Monmouth Priory, 15th century
-Glazed Tile : Great Malvern, 15th century
-Jug, Green Glazed on Buff Ware : Tudor period
-Stove Tile, Green Glazed : Elizabethan
-Candlestick, Glazed Red Ware : Commonwealth
■Jug, Glazed Stoneware : Elizabethan
-Tyg with Three Handles
-Tyg of Wrotham Ware
-Dish of Slip Ware, by Toft
-Dish, Slip Ware, moulded
-Dish, Slip Ware, moulded
-Dish, Slip Ware, moulded
-Fountain, Slip Ware, 1678
-Fragment of Dish, Slipware
-Bowl, Slipware, 1755
■Tyg, with Slip Decoration, 1707
-Posset Pot with Two Handles, marbled
-Piggin, with fine Marbling
•Posset Pot with Two Handles, combed pattern
-Teapot, Agate Ware
-Chocolate or Coffee Pot, Wheildon Ware
■Candlestick, Lambeth Delft, 1648
Wine Bottle, Lambeth Delft, 1662
Dish, " The Temptation of Eve " : Lambeth Delft,..
TO
M.P.G.
B.M.
H.W.
LI.W.
B.M.
B.M.
A.H.C.
B.M.
B.M.
S.K.M.
M.P.G.
H.W.
S.K.M.
H.W.
H.W.
H.W.
H.W.
M.P.G.
M.P.G.
H.W.
M.P.G.
M.P.G.
M.P.G.
S.K.M.
S.K.M.
M.P.G.
S.K.M.
H.W.
FACE PAGE
7
9
11
11
13
13
H
H
17
21
23
25
26
27
27
27
27
27
27
29
30
30
3i
34
36
36
39
X
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
29.
—Dish, M Jacob's Dream " : Lambeth, 1660 ...
TO FACE
B.M.
PAGE
39
30.
—Dish, William III. : Staffordshire Delft
... M.P.G. ...
42
31."
—Statuette, Lydia Dwight : Fulham, 1673 •••
.. S.K.M.
43
32.
—Statuette, Meleager : Fulham
B.M.
44
33-
—Bust, " Prince Rupert" : Fulham
B.M.
44
34--
— Cruche, Fulham Stoneware
S.C. ...
45
35-
—Jug, Fulham Stoneware
S.C.
45
36.-
—Cup, Place's Stoneware
... M.P.G.
49
37--
—Teapot, Red Ware, Style of Elers
.. S.K.M. ...
49
38.-
—Jar and Cover, Drab and White Stoneware ...
.. b.lV.Jyl.
5°
39--
— Flask, White Stoneware, bait Glazed.
b.L-.
5°
40.-
— Sweetmeat Tray, White Stoneware, Salt Glazed
.. O.XV.iVl.
5°
41.-
— Teapoy, Wbite Stoneware, Salt Glazed ...
9 C
57
42.
C 4 1 1 \T n r.r^. WT\r\\¥a. CfnnQivnva Coif (~* 1 o rw £%A
— bpill vase, wnite btoneware, bait Lriazeo. ...
OLOKC ...
57
43-"
— Mug, Wliite Stoneware, Salt Glazed, I75 2 •••
Q c
o.v^. ...
5 5
44.-
— Teapot in form of a House, same ware ...
M.P.G.
5 5
45-'
— Flask, Enamelled in Colours, same ware ...
c
o.v^. ...
46.-
— Jug, Nottingham Brown Stoneware ...
TT \TT
°5
47- •
— Jdowi, JtJnstol JJeiit, i/3*
.. JVl.r.Ljr.
6 5
48.-
— .bowl, .Liverpool JJeltt ...
.. M.Jr.U-.
72
49.-
— Tile, Liverpool Delft
.. b.iS..M.
73
5°--
— Centrepiece, Queen's Ware, Wedgwood
.. M.r.(jr.
ol
5 1 --
— JLamp, lilack ±>asaltes, Wedgwood.
.. M.r.Lr.
8 3
5 2 --
—Vase, Blue and White Jasper, Wedgwood
... M.r.G.
87
53--
—Pedestal, Green and White Jasper, Wedgwood
.. M.P.G.
88
54--
— J u g> White Stoneware, Turner
.. M.P.G.
92
55-'
— Vase, Granite Ware, Neale and Co. ... ...
... b.Jv.M.
94
— vase, tJuti 1 erra L-otta, H.. Mayer
... M.P.G.
95
57--
—Group, " Vicar and Moses," Ralph Wood ...
.. S.K.M. ...
QQ
58.-
—Group, " The Drunken Parson," Staffordshire
.. S.K.M. ...
99
59--
—Group, " Mother and Child," Staffordshire ...
.. S.K.M. ...
100
6a-
—Figure, W. Beckford, Staffordshire
.. H.W. ...
ICO
61.-
-Figure, " Fortitude," Staffordshire
.. S.K.M. ...
100
62.-
—Dish, Cream Ware of Leeds
... M.P.G. ...
104
63.-
-Bust, " Air," Leeds White Ware
S.C. ...
105
64.-
—Bust, " Lord Duncan," Herculaneum
S.C. ...
112
65.
—Vase, Swansea
.. M.P.G. ...
115
PREFACE.
To tell the story of English Ceramics concisely is by no
means an easy task. The subject is large and has many
aspects. I confess that I should find it hard to justify
each detail of the plan I have adopted in this Handbook of
English Pottery. Art Handbook I have tried to make it,
but personal, local, and scientific elements have not been
wholly excluded. Some sections of the subject have been
more developed than others, partly, perhaps, through personal
predilection, but partly, I believe, because of my conviction
concerning their greater importance. Not every English
potter of the last century is mentioned, even though there
exist rare fragments of pottery impressed with his name.
The collecting of inferior earthenwares and porcelains solely
on account of their supposed scarcity meets with little en-
couragement in the pages that follow. A rare piece of
pottery^ is worth attention when it marks a step in advance
or at least a new departure, but when it is clearly the
inferior production of a mere imitator, or shows nothing
but the decay of an art, ii can scarcely demand more than
mention and dismissal.
xii PREFACE.
No attempt has been made to include the wares of the
present century in this Handbook. Anything like a fair
and adequate discussion of modern English Ceramics
would have been impossible within the narrow limits of
my pages. I have stopped somewhere about the end of the
eighteenth century — a close chosen for its convenience, yet
not wholly arbitrary. For about the year 1790, the careful
and elegant and rich wares which had held their own for
nearly half a century were gradually displaced by more
gorgeous productions, covered with gilding, and possessing
even less freedom and spontaneity than the works of
Chelsea and Etruria, in fact, vulgar when not merely
feeble. The decadence which then set in continued without
intermission until the new renaissance of the middle of the
present century. Since then International Exhibitions, loan
collections, and the multiplication of Schools of A rt have
greatly changed the character of English ceramic pro-
ductions.
So much as to the limitations of the present Handbook : a
few words as to its method may now be given. A strictly
chronological treatment of the subject proved to be as im-
practicable as one based on differences between the materials
or " bodies " of the several kinds of ware discussed. So
the contents of each chapter will be found generally to take
up the productions of a single potworks, or else of a
group of potters working in the same district, or producing
PREFACE. xiii
the same kind of ware. The earlier fabrics will be
found described in the earlier chapters, but where a
pottery was long-lived the account is continued so far as
is necessary and thus overlaps the descriptions of works
started at a later date.
This Handbook of English Pottery is in two parts or
volumes — one treating of earthenwares and stonewares,
the other of porcelain. Not that any precise classification
or division of ceramic wares can be maintained. The
complex silicates of alumina which are found in different
clays and form the basis or characteristic ingredient of all
pottery may be so constituted naturally, or so modified
by various degrees of heat in the kiln, or by diverse
admixtures, as to yield all sorts of transitional products.
Such products range from the most opaque, porous, and
soft earthenwares, such as brick or terra cotta, on the
one hand, to the hardest and most translucent porcelains
on the other. Stonewares, such as those made by Dzvight
of Fulham, and the jaspers of Wedgwood, form a con-
necting link between the tzvo extre7nes, both in chemical
coyistitution and physical structure. Then, too, the different
glazes applied to the surface bring a new element of
difficulty into any attempted classification.
The bibliographical notes on pp. xv. and xvi. will enable
the reader to apply directly to the sources from which
much of my own information has been derived: and I
xiv PREFACE.
must further acknowledge the obligation I am under to
many collectors and friends. Foremost amongst these I
cannot refrain from placing the Lady Charlotte Schreiber,
whose large, instructive, and splendid collection has been
generously given to the South Kensington Museum since
the following pages were written, although in past years I
had been accorded many opportunities of studying its
treasures. Other helpers have been Dr. H. IV. Diamond,
Mr. A. W. Franks, Mr. /. E. Nightingale, Mr. C. Read,
Mr. F. W. Rudler, Mr. R. H. Soden-Smith, and Mr. H.
Willett, to all of whom I beg to tender my best thanks.
6th October, 1884.
A. H. C
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
Chaffers, W.— Marks and Monograms on Pottery and YEAR
Porceiain jg^ 6
Church, A. H.— Catalogue of a Collection of English
Pottei 7 1870
Church, A. H.— Scientific and Artistic Aspects of Pottery,
Cantor Lectures 1881
Garnier, E. — Histoire de la Ceramique 11882
Gatty, C. T.— Catalogue of Loan Collection of Wedgwood
Ware, Liverpool Art Club ^79
Jacquemart, A.— Histoire de la Ceramique 1873
Jewitt, Ll.— Ceramic Art in Great Britain 1878
Marryat, J. — History of Pottery and Porcelain .... 1868
Mayer, J.— Art of Pottery in Liverpool .1855
Meteyard, E.— The Life of Josiah Wedgwood 1865
Meteyard, E.— Wedgwood and his Works 1873
Meteyard, E.— Memorials of Wedgwood 1874
Meteyard, E.— The Wedgwood Handbook 1875
Owen, H.— Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol . . 1873
Keeks, T. and Rudler, F. W.— Catalogue of Specimens of
English Pottery in the Museum of Practical Geology,
rd ed.
1876
xvi
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
YEAR
Shaw, S.— The Chemistry of Pottery 1837
Shaw, S. — History of the Staffordshire Potteries 1829
Soden-Smith, R. H. — Catalogue of English Pottery and
Porcelain, Alexandra Palace 1873
Soden-Smith, R. H.— -List of Works on Pottery and Por-
celain in the National Art Library In preparation.
Solon, M. L.— The Art of the Old English Potter .... 1883
Ward, J.— History of Stoke- upon-Trent 9 1843
ENGLISH POTTERY.
PART L
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
Origins and Migrations of Ceramic Inventions.
Although the pottery of the British Isles, regarded mainly
from the artistic point of view, is the subject discussed in this
manual, a few general remarks, on the development of the ceramic
industry may not be out of place at the opening of our intro-
ductory chapter.
It should be noted that the making of pottery requires more
knowledge than that demanded for the fashioning and decoration
of such natural materials as need no after-treatment in order to
be used or to become fit for use. Objects made of clay require
to be hardened by drying and heating, and, though more easily
fashioned to begin with, are more troublesome and uncertain to
complete than vessels of wood, stone, or horn.
Among the earliest forms of European pottery may be named
the simple net-sinkers and spindle whorls from the most primitive
B
2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
of the pile-dwellings of the Swiss lakes. These belong to a pre-
historic period, when the working and use of metals was still
unknown. With the introduction of bronze, the ceramic handi-
craft, like most others, became marked by greater perfection and
elaboration. That the making of pottery, however, had attained
a considerable degree of excellence in very early times, at least
among the Eastern nations of antiquity, is proved not merely by
ancient historical records but by the remains which have been
discovered in the ruined cities and tombs of many Oriental lands.
Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, and China have furnished
tangible proofs of the knowledge possessed by the ancients of
the processes of the ceramic art, including the use of glazes and
coloured enamels.
Babylonian glazed bricks have been found coated with enamels
which, on analysis, were proved to owe their fusibility to silicates
of soda and lead, their bluish-green colour to copper, their white
opacity to tin, their yellow to antimony and lead (Naples yellow),
and their brown colour to iron. The art of enamelling true
pottery was of later introduction into Egypt, although the
Egyptians had long been in the habit of coating natural stones
and sandy or glassy frits with a blue or turquoise enamel, con-
taining copper and soda. The very fine black glaze of certain
Greek vases found in the Campagna, and dating from 700 to
200 B.C., has never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled, since.
The same must be said of the " sealing-wax red " glaze on the
fine hard so-called Samian pottery made in later times in Gaul,
Germany, and Italy, and found so abundantly on the site of
Roman stations in Britain. The varied but matt colours found
on the Athenian key t hi of the period of perfection (b.c. 450 to
350), are not true glazes or enamel colours, but simply coloured
clays or engobes, fired, if at all, at a very low temperature indeed,
and extremely friable.
The story of the development of the coloured decoration of
pottery in India, Persia, and China has never yet been unravelled
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 3
That there was a close relationship in method and material
between some of the Egyptian enamels of which we have spoken,
and the coloured glazes employed in Sindh and the Panjab for
more than six hundred years, is evident. And that a great variety
of beautiful coloured enamels and lustred glazes were used in
Persia before the thirteenth century of our era is proved by the
remains found in the ruins of Rhages, a city which was finally
destroyed in the middle of the thirteenth century. Our knowledge
of the making and decoration of pottery in China remains imper-
fect, but it seems that not till the eleventh century were any
coloured enamels and glazes there employed save blue, turquoise,
and celadon green, while many other colours were introduced so
late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In tracing,
however, the connection of European ceramics with the East we
must not forget that very beautiful enamels and colours were
brought into Europe as early as the eighth century by the Arab
conquest of Spain. Yet, although we can trace many of the later
steps by which particular types of glazes, enamels, and decorative
elements migrated from one country to another, becoming modified
by local conditions, still the earlier stages of development and the
original centre or centres of discovery remain obscure. But it is
well to bear in mind that there exist certain natural and obvious
methods and materials for decorating pottery which must have
suggested themselves to workmen quite independently in countries
and in ages widely separated. Examples of this phenomenon
are constantly recurring. In this connection reference may be
made to a fragment of pottery (now in the British Museum), from
an ancient mound under a ruined temple at Gulistan, Pishin.
The decoration of this fragment is identical with that of many
English slip wares of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
A pale and dull red body has first received a white coating of slip,
and through this the conventionalized design of a horse has been
traced with a point, removing the white slip and revealing the
brownish red clay body beneath. Then the whole has been
4
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
glazed with a smooth bright rather yellowish glaze : some spots
of puce, pale yellow brown, and green colours are due to manga-
nese, iron, and copper respectively. Had this curious fragment
been unearthed in England instead of in Persia, it would have
been at once assigned to a Staffordshire potter of the commence-
ment of the eighteenth century. It would be easy to cite a
multitude of similar instances in which close comparisons may
be instituted between the ceramic products of distant lands and
remote times.
In considering the development of the potter's art in the British
Isles we naturally begin by inquiring, "What historical succession
of ceramic remains, indigenous or foreign, can be traced in this
country ?" We have endeavoured to condense descriptions of
Ancient British Pottery, of Romano-British Pottery, and of
Anglo-Saxon Pottery into the few pages with which our next
chapter opens.
CHAPTER II.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY IN ENGLAND.
Ancient British— Romano-British— Anglo-Saxon —Mediaeval— Tudor —
Jacobean.
Ancient British Pottery. — Numerous examples are extant of the
pottery made by the inhabitants of Britain before the coming of
the Romans. They are generally found in the barrows or mounds
raised over their dead by the ancient Britons, and are accompanied
by bronze and bone implements, as well as by axes, arrow-heads,
knives, &c, of stone or flint. Vessels of pottery are found with
both burnt and unburnt bones — in the latter case they seem to
have been placed near the head of the corpse.
The vessels found have been arranged, from their shapes, into
four general classes, viz., cinerary urns, food vessels, drinking
cups, and incense cups. With the exception of the first, these
names are quite fanciful, for no evidence is forthcoming to show
for what purposes these vessels were used, or why they were
deposited with the dead. The cinerary urn, in some cases, con-
tains the calcined bones of the cremated body, and occasionally,
also, a number of burnt flints. In form, it resembles somewhat
an ordinary flower-pot, but its rim consists of a broad band
sloping towards the top inwards. The food vessel is not dis-
similar in form but is more squat, and has, generally, a flat upper
edge, with horizontal channels round the upper part, forming
6
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
a neck. The drinking cups are of various shapes, a cylindrical or
barrel-like form being, perhaps, more common than any other.
They are invariably of thinner fabric than the other sepulchral
vessels : their edge is thin, and they are tall in proportion to their
diameter. Of the incense cups it is difficult to give a general
description, as they vary greatly both in form and size, but their
most usual shape may be compared to that produced by placing
two truncated cones base to base. Thus they diminish in size
from the middle, both towards the top, and towards the bottom :
in height they rarely exceed three inches. These curious little
vessels are often of very quaint forms ; they invariably accompany
deposits of burnt bones. Various conjectures have been made as
to their use, but the most probable seems to be that of their
having been used to carry the fire to light the funeral pile, a
purpose for which the holes with which they are pierced would be
of great use in keeping the fuel alight during its passage to the
place of cremation.
The material of which all these vessels are made seems to have
been a local clay. They are, in all cases, formed entirely by hand,
without the aid of potter's wheel or lathe : they contain an
admixture of fragments of stone which served to preserve the
shape of the vases during the slight firing to which they were
subjected. They are frequently spoken of as "sun-dried," but it
is probable that they were always burnt, doubtless in an open
fire, as many of them exhibit the partial blackening, with tinges of
red, resulting from an imperfect firing process.
The methods used in the decoration of these ancient wares
were very simple, though, in some cases, the result is highly
satisfactory. The most common mode is that of impressing in
the moist clay a twisted cord. Sometimes a point was used to
scratch in the soft clay patterns similar to those formed by the
cord. With these simple appliances, an immense variety of com -
binations, generally of straight lines, was produced. In some of
the more carefully made specimens, the potter has, however, used
>
DE VEL OPMENT OF POTTER Y.
7
special and ingenious devices of his own. For instance, in the
Greenwell Collection in the British Museum, there is a very
beautiful food vessel which bears an elegant vandyke border
produced by impressions side by side from the triangular end
of a stick. Fig. i is a late British urn, almost plain.
There are strong reasons for believing that all these vessels
were intended for sepulchral purposes only, and were never used
as domestic utensils.
The Roman conquerors of Britain introduced many varieties of
earthenware. Not content with importing the fine, smooth, red
ware of Gaul and Italy, the so-called "Samian," they imitated this
pottery with some measure of success, using the native clays. In
every place where they settled they employed local materials,
often of a very poor kind, in the manufacture of coarse sepulchral
urns to hold the ashes of their dead. And they developed, in a
large number of localities, special and peculiar makes of earthen-
ware, characterized by differences of material, decoration, or form.
Some of these varieties of earthenware have been definitely assigned
to particular places, not merely by the evidence afforded through
the discovery of certain types in certain districts, but also by the
surer testimony of Roman kilns still containing baked earthen
vessels and surrounded by wasters and fragments of the same
fabrique. By evidence such as this, one can classify, in great
measure, some of the chief kinds of Britanno-Roman pottery into
groups : —
Castor ware : made near Castor, the Roman Durobrivae, in
Northamptonshire, and on the River Nen and its tributaries, is
either grey or yellowish brown, sometimes with a slight reddish,
dark brown, or dull black glaze : it is thin, hard, and well potted,
and is ornamented with slip decoration, sometimes of white
pipeclay. The forms are varied and elegant ; many vases, un -
guentaria, and jars of good shape and decoration have been traced
to these Castor potworks. Among such we may name E 89,
93> 156, in the Jermyn Street Collection.
8
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
New Forest ware : made near Crockhill, New Forest, Hamp-
shire. The vases and bowls made here are of a porous but smooth
ware of various shades of grey, buff, pale red, and brown, and
have, in many instances, a dull purplish glaze, or thin reddish
washes of a ferrruginous pigment in the form of bands, circular
ornaments, and waved stripes. Some of the pieces are decorated
by large indentations on the surface. Characteristic examples are
E 130 — 134 in the Jermyn Street Collection. This manufacture
probably lasted until the beginning of the fifth century.
Upchurch ware : made of local clays in the marshes about the
mouth of the Medway in Kent, near the village of Upchurch.
The body of this ware is generally of a dark ash-grey or a slate
colour, with a dull bluish-black surface. The blackish hue is
traceable to the tarry matters given off from the fuel through the
" smothering " of the kiln fire when the baking was nearly finished.
The supply of air being partly cut off, the carbonaceous matters
could neither burn nor escape, and, being absorbed by the ware,
caused the iron in the clay to assume the black or bluish tints of
imperfect oxidation. The dishes and vases made at Upchurch
are found widely scattered over our island, and in some few
instances seem to have been detected on the Continent. An
unglazcd or slightly glazed red ware was also made at Upchurch.
All the ornamental wares of this district are decorated with raised
dots or bosses, or with incised lines variously arranged. There
are many specimens of Upchurch ware (E 197 — 232) in the
Jermyn Street Collection.
Besides the Roman kilns and sites of potworks already
mentioned, others have been found in the counties of Lincoln,
Oxford, Dorset, Somerset, Stafford, and York ; but the wares of
Castor, Crockhill, and Upchurch furnish the three chief character-
istic types to which an immense number of Romano-British wares
belong. Still it must be remembered that the buff ware employed
largely for mortaria, the unglazed red ware seen' in the various
kinds of tiles, as well as the red, buff, and black tessellae used in
DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY.
9
mosaic pavements were made in many different places in Roman
Britain. The Romans also certainly made wares covered wholly
or in part with a vitreous glaze, owing its greenish colour to the
presence of iron protoxide ; examples of this kind have been
found in several Yorkshire and Oxfordshire localities. In this
connection a small vase (Fig. 2), found at Ewell in Surrey, at a
depth of thirty-seven feet, may be referred to : it was presented
to the British Museum by Dr. H. W. Diamond. Not only is the
outside of the vessel wholly covered with a yellow glaze, but there
are curved lines of a white pipeclay slip or engobe, also covered
with the glaze, which has the appearance of being plumbiferous.
Anglo-Saxon Pottery. — Judging from the pottery made by the
inhabitants of Britain after the departure of the Romans, the
latter do not seem to have planted their art very firmly in the
country. For it is not to be credited that if there had been a
better ware commonly made in England at the period of the
Saxon invasions, these foreigners would have been content with
their ungraceful and ill-made pottery. The Saxons apparently
brought over their own patterns and workmen, and made, here in
England, vessels of pottery similar in design to those to which
they had been accustomed in their former home. This is amply
proved by the discovery of a Saxon cemetery at Stade on the
Elbe, described fully by Kemble in Hotcb Ferales. A plate is
there given in which Saxon urns found in England are placed side
by side with those from the Elbe, that the great likeness between
them may be more evident.
Saxon cinerary urns from the eastern or midland counties may
be described as of a dark brown or grey clay, not turned on the
wheel, of an ungraceful and somewhat globular form, with small
mouths, and convex bases. Their decoration is of a simple
character, consisting of incised lines, or bands of impressed
pattern, generally repetitions of one or more stamps, e.g. a
rhombic arrangement of a number of small dots, a square divided
by crossing lines, a fylfot, or a circle with wedge-shaped radii.
I 3
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
A common feature is also the bulging out of the shoulders at
intervals.
The relics accompanying vessels of this character comprise
glass vessels and beads, combs of ivory or bone, shears,' tweezers,
and similar instruments, as well as buckles, brooches, or clasps of
bronze.
The Saxon pottery found in the south of England differs even
more from that found further north (in East Anglia) than do the
other remains. The personal ornaments and implements of the
southern counties show a refinement and artistic culture to which
the Saxons further removed from the continent of Europe never
attained.
From the shapes of the vessels found, as well as from other
evidence, it seems probable that cremation was not practised
among them, and it may be that these remains are of a period
after cremation had ceased in the district.
The ware is well potted, turned on the wheel, and is sometimes
ornamented with incised comb-lines, like the Roman ware which
it often approaches very closely in colour and form. An oviform
bottle-like shape is frequently found, a type which scarcely ever
occurs among the East Anglians. The colour of the ware ranges
from grey to buff.
All the Saxon vessels of which mention has been made are of
the period of the Heptarchy. Of the later Saxon ware nothing is
known ; but from the closer connection with the Continent it is
probable that it resembled the ware of Normandy and other parts
of France, where it was the habit, until comparatively recent times,
to bury vessels of pottery with the dead.
The wares of the post-Saxon time are so imperfectly known
that we shall allude to them but casually in the course of the
present chapter, now passing on abruptly to the mediaeval period.
In the Constitutions of the Abbey of Evesham (12 14) earthen-
ware cups, jugs, basons, &c, are named. Such pieces, of about
this time, as the jugs in the form of warriors on horseback preserved
I
DE VEL OPM ENT OF POTTER V.
i r
in the Salisbury and Scarborough Museums, are rare and quaint
illustrations of the potter's art of the day, but there is no reason
for supposing such productions to have been at any time common ;
they certainly cannot be called beautiful. Towards the close of
the thirteenth century, pottery pitchers, plates, dishes, salt-cellars,
and cups, are not infrequently mentioned in contemporary records.
But there are no grounds for assuming that these productions
possessed any features of an artistic sort. Now and then, it is
true, the simplicity of the forms adopted, and their exact adaj Na-
tion to their uses, gave these vessels an air of distinction, but
their finish and decoration were usually incomplete. Yet gener-
ally the paste of the ware was coarse, the pottery and burning
imperfect, and the forms ungainly. Such vessels as have survived
for examples of this and even of a later period, if they have any
ornament at all, show rough, applied, or pressed heads, strips and
dots of clay, indentations, and rude impressed patterns. Two
examples, which have been assigned to the fourteenth century (Figs.
3 and 4), both jugs, were found in a dipping-well at Chichester :
they are in Mr. Willett's Collection. Such pieces as these, and
many other examples of similar character, are to be seen in the
British Museum and in Jermyn Street. They are usually covered
partially or wholly with a dull green glaze : it is generally impos-
sible to fix the dates of individual specimens, but now and then a
coin, or other object of ascertained age, comes in to help us in fixing
the period of fictile vessels with which it has been disinterred.
But for our present purpose the chronology of these obscure vessels is
not of much moment, considering how rude is the art they represent.
During the course of the fourteenth century, some of the
artistic skill, conspicuously shown in carved stone- work, metal-
work, and Missal painting, seems to have been extended occasion-
ally to pieces of pottery, but our records of such fine ceramic
work are practically confined to a single group of this class. For
the so-called encaustic tiles used for the floors (and to some extent
for the walls) of ecclesiastical and domestic buildings, since the
c
I 2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
beginning of the thirteenth century, show, for the most part, a
much higher degree of artistic and technical perfection than do
such other ceramic works of British craftsmen of the time as have
come down to us. Probably these beautiful tiles, so well designed
and so well potted, were almost invariably made in the great
religious houses themselves, and these, we know, borrowed some
of their arts from Continental sources, especially from Italy. But
it is incredible that English mediaeval potworks should have been
able to turn out such noteworthy examples of ceramic art as are
the mediaeval floor tiles of our ecclesiastical buildings, and yet
have never produced any vessels of beautiful form and decoration.
That England, at all events some time about the close of the
fifteenth century, if not before, had acquired a reputation for her
earthenware, is shown by such casual references as the following.
An inventory of the goods of Florimond Robertet (who built his
chateau of Bury in 1504), mentions vessels not then modern,
obtained not only from France, but "other fine potteries, the
best of Italy, Germany, Flanders, England, Spain."
Properly to discuss the very large topic of mediaeval tilework,
would demand much more extensive limits than those within
which we have to compress the elements of the whole subject of
British artistic pottery. But we may, at least, mention a few of
the more important facts about ornamental mediaeval tiles which
have been ascertained of late ye~rs. They were made, and had
even obtained a high degree of excellence, during the thirteenth
century : their manufacture continued until the sixteenth century,
and occasionally, in some districts, even down to the eighteenth.
Kilns have been discovered at Malvern, and other places in
Worcestershire j in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Shropshire, and
Staffordshire. The earliest tiles were of one colour, while the
designs upon them were either incised, impressed, or embossed.
Inlaid tiles were next produced, these being, in fact, first im-
pressed, and then having had the hollows filled in with a differently
coloured clay. This kind was distinguished by rich design and
DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY.
perfect workmanship. Sometimes small tiles of differing shapes
and colours were arranged in composite patterns of geometrical
characters. The use of several colours laid on a single tile
indicates a later time. The tiles of the Chapter House of
Westminster, the Abbey Church of Malmesbury, Lilleshall Priory
in Shropshire, Malvern Priory Church, Prior Cruden's Chapel in
Ely, Gloucester Cathedral, and Chertsey Abbey may be cited as
illustrating the several varieties named above. Many instances also
might have been adduced from the ancient ecclesiastical buildings
of Scotland and Ireland. It is needless to say that the designs
met with on these tiles are almost infinite in variety, and include
conventional foliage and flowers, and many ornaments derived
from vegetable forms, animals, badges, shields, and heraldic
cognisances, architectural canopies, texts, mottoes, emblems, and
prayers, human heads, single figures, and composite pictures. We
give two examples — one from Monmouth Priory (Fig. 5), and one
from Great Malvern (Fig. 6).
The pilgrims' bottles and costrels, generally of an oval flattened
form, with a small foot and neck, and a few loops for suspension
by means of a leather thong, were made in England for two or
three centuries, and are contemporary with the encaustic tiles. The
later specimens are glazed partially or wholly, and are sometimes
marbled with white and red clays. (See No. 305 — 1876 in the
South Kensington Museum.) The forms assumed by the
costrels are, perhaps, the least inartistic of any native ceramic
vessels of the time which have come down to us. Foreign
examples, and examples in other materials, may have suggested
patterns to our potters. For costrels were sometimes made in
more precious materials than clay. In the South Kensington
Museum there is a small one of silver (269*79) of Spanish origin,
and dating from the first half of the. fifteenth century.
There are in existence a considerable number of vessels (and
a multitude of fragments), chiefly jugs like that shown in Fig. 7,
which, from the circumstances in which they have been found,
c 2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
and from the evidence of similar vessels portrayed in contempo-
rary books, manuscripts, and paintings, may be generally assigned
to a time at least as early as the Tudor period, 1485-1603, while
some of them are certainly earlier. Usually they are of a buff-
coloured, fairly hard body, covered nearly all over with a green
glaze. Of this kind are the rattles in the form of heads with
ruffs and the children's toys, assignable to the time of Elizabeth.
Upon some specimens of similar ware we find letters or dates
as on the stove tile in the British Museum (Fig. 8), which is of
Elizabeth's time ; this piece is however of a red clay. We wish
we were quite sure that it is not of German origin. It exhibits
a degree of technical accomplishment hardly usual at the time in
native wares of this class. A similar piece of a buff clay with
lead glaze also bears the letters E R. It is a kind of hanging
wall candlestick, having two nozzles on a sort of tray at the base,
with a highly ornate panel at the back, and an arched perforated
top. The several parts of this candlestick have been formed out
of one piece and baked as a whole. The designs and ornaments
of many of these pieces are characteristic of the contemporary
architectural style, and are not without artistic merit. They pass
by insensible gradations into the more picturesque and varied
forms of the Stuart period, represented by such, a piece as the
candlestick of 1651 (Fig. 9), and a large number of other speci-
mens belonging to the several classes of productions, to which
attention will be directed in a subsequent chapter, in which will be
described the slip wares of Toft and his contemporaries and suc-
cessors, and also the similar pieces made at Wrotham in Kent.
Of the English ceramic products which we have so far been
considering, the glaze, where it occurs, has been produced either
by lead or by a glassy substance ; generally by the former, applied
in the form of powdered galena, the chief ore of lead, a compound
of that metal with sulphur The use of red lead, one of the
oxides of lead, and of glazes containing as a chief ingredient a
fusible native silicate, such as felspar, is of later date. But with
Fig. 8.— STOVE TILE, ELIZABETHAN. British Museum.
9- — CANDLESTICK, COMMONWEALTH, 1651. British Museum.
DE VELOPMENT OF POTTER V.
the introduction of common salt as a glazing material an entirely
new step in ceramic progress was taken. This glaze, we shall
see, could only be produced at a high temperature, and, in conse-
quence, the ware to which it was applied must be of a kind to
resist a great degree of heat without fusion or even softening —
in a word, the ware must be refractory. Such a body properly
burnt becomes a stoneware, and is partially vitrified, showing in
fact when microscopically examined a texture like that of true
hard porcelain. Stoneware was not always glazed, nor if glazed
always with salt. Dark brown mugs and drinking vessels have
been found (at Bristol, Brecon, and elsewhere) which belonged to
a period not later than 1500, which were covered with a mixed
glaze of which soda and oxide of iron formed the chief con-
stituents. Still, the mention of stoneware always recalls the
process of salt-glazing, and it will be useful to say here a few
words on that subject.
When a piece of old foreign stoneware is offered for sale by
auction in England or France, it is almost always described as
"Gres de Flandres." Yet the grounds for this attribution seem
to be merely traditional. We now know the exact localities in
Germany where many of the best and most characteristic kinds
of decorative stoneware vessels were made, as for instance at
Raren near Aachen, Frechen and Siegburg near Coin, Hohr, and
Grenzhausen near Coblenz, Kreusen in Bavaria, and several towns
in Franconia. Still, although the names "Gres de Flandres " and
"Gres Flamands" are constantly wrongly applied to stoneware
vessels of German not of Flemish origin, recent researches have
shown that not only at Raren (now belonging to Germany, though)
in the old Duchy of Limburg, but at Bouffioulx, Chatelet, and
Pont-de-loup, three communes of Belgium, true stonewares were
made, bearing in many instances the designs of Flemish artists and
the arms of Flemish families. Vessels, as well as innumerable frag-
ments, and even the kilns themselves, have been found on the
sites we have named. It has also been lately ascertained that
* 6 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
glazed stonewares were made at Namur about the middle of the
seventeenth century. These were sometimes decorated with
cobalt blue and manganese puce.
The use in foreign potteries of a salt-glaze for stoneware is
assigned by some authorities to as early a date as the beginning
of the twelfth century. The first pieces were without ornament
of any sort, and it was not till the fourteenth century that even
very crude semblances of human heads appeared upon the bellies
of the pots. Not until the second half of the sixteenth century
were the veritable decorated German and Flemish stonewares
made. Shortly they appeared in many places almost at once, but
in the next century their artistic decadence set in. Many were
doubtless sent into England, but many of the simpler sorts were
made here ; in what localities we cannot yet state with certainty,
with the single exception of Fulliam. But we have no proof that
the Elizabethan silver-mounted jugs with wide cylindrical necks
were made at Fulham, for John Dwight's patent for stoneware was
not granted till April 13th, 1671. The earliest Fulham pieces
cannot be given to a date previous to Charles the Second's reign,
1660-85. Still there are reasons for assigning an English origin
to some at least of the " Bellarmines," "greybeards," or " long-
beards" made during James the First's reign, 1603-25, and to
the wide-mouthed jugs of the Elizabethan period, 1558-1603.
The shapes of many of these differ from those of the Continental
examples, while the mottling of the glaze is, in a large number of
instances, more varied and more pronounced. Then, too, we
meet occasionally with pieces which in all respects seem thoroughly
English, as for instance a small brown cruche in the Schreiber
Collection, dated E R 1594, and a large cruche of similar character
with N N°N 1594. The occurrence of "wasters," which could
never have been imported, points in the same direction.
In the South Kensington Museum there are six of these stone-
ware jugs, silver-mounted. The register-numbers on the labels,
the dimensions of the pieces, the prices paid for each specimen,'
Fig. MX— STONEWARE JUG, ELIZABETHAN. South
Kensington Museum. No. 2120 '55.
DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY.
*7
and the date of the platemarks (or an approximate date where the
date-letter is wanting) are given in the following list : —
£ * d.
(i) 2120, 1855 io\ inches high by 4J inches
. 22 O O
1600
(2) 2121, 1855 9} „ „ 5
20 IO O
1580
(3) 8498, 1863 7 1, 11 4l 11
I2 0 0
1560
(4) 214, 1869 I2i „ 7 „
75 0 0
1590
(5) 215, 1869 u „ „ 5$ w
75 0 0
1576
(6) 140, 1882 5| „ „ 4I „
80 0 0
1565
Figure 10 represents the third of these
specimens.
The jug
itself is of English make, we should conjecture, if any of these
pieces of stoneware be not foreign. The dates of the mounted
specimens range between 1530 and 1600, or thereabouts. In
James the First's reign they seem to have been no longer in
fashion.
Much doubt is attached to the first use of salt in glazing
stoneware in England. The popular account, current in the
Staffordshire potteries, that it was discovered by accident in 1680,
owing to the brine in an ordinary brown earthen pot having
boiled over, and then been boiled down to dryness over a common
fire, and so, the pot becoming red-hot, a glaze was formed upon its
surface, is untenable. The heat would not have sufficed to effect
the necessary chemical change involved in true salt-glazing ; and
had the heat sufficed, and the other conditions been favourable,
the common brown earthenware pot is not likely to have stood
the temperature. A more reasonable story, told by the old work-
man Steel to Josiah Wedgwood, and noted by him in 1765, is that
the Brothers Elers brought the process over with them in 1688,
and that it soon became known and was adopted in Burslem, two
miles only from the Elers' potworks. Burslem remained for a
century the chief seat of this manufacture. But before this time,
namely in 1671, John Dwight had set up his salt-glazing kilns at
Fulham, and at some other centre or centres must have been
produced, at a still earlier date, those English Bellarmines and
/ D
i8
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Elizabethan jugs of which we have before made mention. Of the
productions made under another patent granted in the same
year as Dwight's, namely, a patent to make stonewares taken
out by J. Ariens van Hamme, 23 April, 1671, we are entirely
ignorant.
A word or two concerning a fourth kind of glaze may be said
here. The use of glazes (or rather enamels) containing the white
oxide of tin cannot be traced to an early period in England. It
was an imported artifice. Finding it difficult to get a white body
of clay on which to display their colours, potters bethought them
of a white coating. This process of Eastern origin found its way
into Italy, Spain, France, and Holland. In Italy it soon reached
perfection 5 in Holland it was extensively adopted later on for
those imitations of blue and white Chinese porcelain which have
become famous throughout Europe under the name of delft.
From Holland England borrowed it. Early in the seventeenth
century a tin enamel was successfully employed at Lambeth, blue
and yellowish brown and, very rarely, puce and turquoise colours
being applied over the stanniferous enamel, but under the thin
and colourless glaze which formed the actual surface.
In attempting to separate the original from the derived styles
and methods of English ceramic manufacture, we find much
difficulty. The materials for the body of pottery have much in
common whether we are discussing China, Italy, or England : but
the glazes and the decorations afford distinguishing marks in
many cases. While the tin enamel came from the Continent, the
slip ware seems to have been indigenous, although some authorities
have suggested for it a Roman origin, and consider that the
Durobrivren pottery has furnished at least a suggestion for its
production. The stoneware of Fulham was clearly imitated from
that of Cologne, while Elers' unglazed red ware was an unmis-
takable and acknowledged copy of a Chinese manufacture. In
the following list of typical wares made in England the varieties
which owed little or nothing to foreign sources, either in their
DE VELOPMENT OF POTTER Y.
*9
constituents and composition or in their decorative treatment, or
in both, are printed in capitals : —
Green-glazed buff ware.
Brown-glazed red ware.
Lambeth and other delft ware.
Wrotham and other slip ware.
Dwight's Fulham stoneware.
Elers' red ware.
Agate, marbled, and combed ware.
tortoiseshell ware.
White salt-glazed stoneware.
Black basaltes ware.
White and cream-coloured earthenware.
Jasper ware.
Bow and Chelsea bone-earth porcelain.
Chelsea frit porcelain.
Worcester soapstone porcelain.
Brancas-Lauraguais and Cookworthy's Kaolin porcelain.
Reference has already been made to vessels, generally of
uncouth form, having a green glaze. These are of various ages,
but some of them may certainly be assigned to times which are
usually called mediaeval, while others are of the Norman period.
Belonging to the seventeenth century, however, while the majority
of the vessels were clumsy in form, weak in colour, and poor in
decoration, specimens are met with which are worthy of a good
place in any collection of English wares. A rich lead glaze,
coloured with iron, manganese or copper, and a number of
additions to the bare shape of the vessel, are the chief character-
istics of these pieces. Although the ceramic productions of other
countries may have had something to do with stimulating the
manufacture of these fine pieces, they remain among the most
original conceptions of English potters. Their production began
in the first decade of the seventeenth century ; the Staffordshire
d 2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
potteries district was the chief place of their manufacture, but
they were copied in many parts of the country — almost wherever
a small potter's kiln existed. The body of which they are made is
the same common red clay as that which was used for ordinary ware,
but its colour and texture were concealed by the rich glaze lavishly
spread over the surface. The collections of Mr. Willett and Mr.
Solon are rich in specimens of this sort ; it may be studied in the
English series in the British Museum and the Jermyn Street
Museum. Most of the examples are drinking vessels— with
from two to ten handles, intended to be passed from guest to
guest, each person drinking from a different part of the rim. As
these cups will be described more fully among slip wares, and as
many of the specimens illustrating the use of slip decoration
illustrate also the peculiar richness of the glazes used, we may
confine our attention just now to the usual form of the vessel and
its handles. The form in the smaller specimens with two handles
is not unlike that of a mug with incurved sides, tapering towards
the base. Sometimes a globular shape was given to the tyg ;
sometimes it had a gourd-like swelling near the middle. In the
larger specimens, the form was often broader and shallower,
passing by insensible gradations to that of the covered posset-pot
with its two opposite handles. The handles , were usually made
with a somewhat sharp curve, and were frequently enriched\vith a
small loop below and a knob above. Loops and knobs are also
frequently found upon the lids of posset-pots belonging to the
same class of wares. Both tygs and posset-pots generally had com-
paratively plain straight rims for convenience in drinking. There
is a fine four-handled tyg in the British Museum, dated 1640; it is
covered with a deep brown glaze. Some light-coloured tygs (one
with four handles is in the British Museum) are met with ; nests of
three to seven cups, communicating at their sides and with inter-
twined handles, were also made in the same ware, although they
occur in other kinds, and rather frequently in the white delft of
Lambeth.
Fig. ii.— TYG WITH THREE HANDLES. Museum of Practical
Geology.
DEVELOPMENT OF POTTERY.
2 I
The Liverpool Museum possesses some single-glazed tygs,
while a fine four-handled tyg is preserved in the Salisbury and
South Wilts Museum. It is of ordinary brown clay glazed purple
brown. It bears this inscription : —
On the foot are the initials R.K. S.K.
There are other specimens and many fragments of these vessels
with self-coloured and mottled glazes in the museums of Stoke,
Hanley, and Burslem.
But we shall have more to say about these and similar vessels
in speaking of slip decorated wares in the next chapter : we now
give a single figure of one of them in the Jermyn Street Collection,
which has no slip decoration upon it (Fig. n).
The details to be presently given as to different English
manufactures of earthenware and stoneware will, we hope, fill up
with some degree of completeness the sketch of English ceramics
commenced in the present chapter. When we begin to find
written and printed records of individual potters and potteries —
when w r e see wares stamped with signs, marks, and names, and
even with the exact dates of production, we have the means of
working upon surer ground. As the seventeenth century draws to
a close, though much is at present vague and conjectural, the
particular works of individual potters begin to stand out with
prominence : and it becomes our duty to discuss, in separate
chapters, the chief productions of that and of subsequent periods
down to the close of the eighteenth century. Here and there,
where the continuity of the discussion or the peculiarity of the
products demands it, we may have a word to say about wares
made subsequently to the year 1 800.
Here is the Gest of the Barly Korne
Glad Ham I the cild is born
La
1692
CHAPTER III.
EARLY SLIP WARES.
Wrotham warc-Toft and his contemporaries and successors-Moulded dishes
— Slip tombstones.
One of the earliest devices for varying the surface colour of
plain red earthenware, was the use of a second clay of a different
hue. Examples assignable to the end of the sixteenth and
beginning of the seventeenth century are not uncommon, in
wh.ch ornaments of white clay have been affixed to the red clay
body. Sometimes white and red clays were marbled upon a red
or brown clay basis, but more frequently, the white, or light-
coloured clay, was used in the form of a " slip," that is a thin
creamy mixture of clay and water, dropped, or trailed, from a
spouted vessel upon the surface of the piece to be decorated.
Slip ware is a convenient term for pieces ornamented in this way
which indeed much resembles the process by which the complex
sugar ornaments on bride-cakes are laboriously built up from a
syrup, the syrup, alas, being too often blown from a quill held in
the mouth of a dirty, but clever, old man, well-practised in the
curious art. The slips were not always white, but buff, yellow
brown, and even nearly black ; while the ground, or body, was
frequently of a light colour. Candlesticks, small and large
dnnking vessels in the form of cups, tygs, and posset-pots, jugs
and piggins, large plates or platters, and cradles for birthday
EARLY SUP WARES. 23
gifts occur amongst the most usual pieces in slip ware. The
earliest dated pieces do not go back beyond the middle of the
seventeenth century, but the simpler forms of slip ware, there is
good reason to believe, were in common use nearly a century
earlier. The manufacture is not yet extinct, but in many a
country market and fair, large pans, and other earthenware vessels,
roughly adorned with stripes and leafy forms in white slip, may
even now be seen exposed for sale.
Kent and Staffordshire may be said to contest the first con-
siderable employment of slip decoration for objects of any degree
of importance. As a great number of striking pieces of this
kind cannot be assigned with certainty to any particular maker,
or even county, we must be content to consider the peculiarities
and excellences of slip ware, whether from the south of England,
or from the Midland district, in a single chapter.
WROTHAM WARE.
The earliest piece of Wrotham ware yet identified is, we believe,
a jug in the Maidstone Museum, dated 1656. But the candle-
stick of 1649 m tne Jermyn Street Museum carries us a few
years back, when slip ornamentation was confined to dots or
drops — that is, if w r e are right in assigning this piece to Wrotham.
The British Museum candlestick (Fig. 9), is intermediate in
complexity of ornament and in date (1651). Mr. Willett's
Wrotham tyg (Fig. 12), with its applied medallions and slip
decorations, lends support to the view that the Jermyn Street
specimen, and another specimen in the same collection, dated
1 62 1 (No. G 17), may also be Wrotham. In the Baldwin
Collection was a piece of undoubted Wrotham ware inscribed
W CR
WROTHAM RS 1659
The same must be said of the very large dish in the British
Museum — twenty inches in diameter. This is of the usual red
24 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
clay, but is covered with a white layer, cut through to form the
ornament; there are also some spots of brown slip, and the
inscription in raised letters
IE ; WE 1699 ; WROT ; HAM.
The whole is covered with a yellow lead glaze. One of
Mr. Willett's Wrotham tygs also bears the date 1699, while that
in the Jermyn Street Collection is lettered
WROTHAM T.E. 1703.
Wrotham is between Sevenoaks and Maidstone. It is certain
that excavations on the site of the old potworks would lead to
some interesting discoveries, and clear up some of the difficulty
which we feel in attributing doubtful pieces to their true
origin. As a rule the Wrotham slip ware is more elaborately,
or at least more variously, ornamented than that of Stafford-
shire, as represented by the most famous of its workers in slip
decoration.
toft's ware.
One of the most characteristic types of seventeenth century
pottery, is to be found in the large dishes decorated with coloured
slips in rude ornamental forms, and often bearing in bold letters
the makers' names. These dishes are usually about seventeen or
eighteen inches across, and nearly three inches deep. They are
of common red clay with a wash of pipeclay on the inner surface.
Upon this white ground the larger features of the decoration, and
some of the smaller details, were laid in red slip : a darker red,
or reddish-brown slip was also introduced, especially for the
outlines of the ornament, while dots of white slip were freely
superposed in many parts of the design. The whole was glazed
with lead, and so a yellowish hue was given to the pipeclay
ground and ornaments. These dishes are rather irregular in
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EARLY SLIP WARES.
25
form, and were obviously made for ornament rather than
use. They mostly belong to the last quarter of the seven-
teenth century. Many good examples bear the name of Thomas
Toft in large capital letters of slip upon a label on the rim:
two of such specimens are in the South Kensington Museum,
and one in the Jermyn Street Collection. Of the former, one,
No. 299-'6 9 , is here figured (Fig. 13): the other has the"
letters T L below the figures of the lion and unicorn, which
form the ornament in the centre. Toft seems to have
begun the making of these fine dishes about the year 1660,
or a short time afterwards. His potworks were situated at
Tinker's Clough, in a lane between Shelton and Newcastle-
under-Lyme.
The following is a fairly complete list of potters' names oc-
curring on dishes, or other important pieces of this character, in
various public and private collections :—
JOSEPH GLASS. WILLIAM TALOR.
T. JOHNSON, 1694. GEORGE TAYLOR.
W. RICH, 1702. RALPH TURNOR.
THOMAS SANS. RALPH TOFT, 1676.
WILLIAM SANS. THOMAS TOFT.
RALPH SIMPSON. JOHN WRIGHT, 1707.
Mr. Willett has two dishes of the same style bearing the names,
respectively, of MARGERE NASH, and MARY PERKINS :
these may be potters' names, but in all probability they represent
the persons for whom the pieces were made.
The desigus on these dishes are frequently taken from the
Royal arms, from coins, and from needlework and embroidery :
sometimes they are grotesque representations of Royal personages
(Charles II., William and Mary); sometimes they are of a
symbolic character (the Pelican in her Piety). These dishes show
the native style of English pottery to perfection : they have a
26
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
quaint originality of their own, and form very picturesque
groupings when associated with the tygs and posset-pots of the
same origin and date. The manufacture of this rough ware
continued up to the close of the eighteenth century, although the
finer and more serviceable delft or tin-enamelled ware of Lambeth,
Bristol, and Liverpool, gradually superseded it. In Staffordshire
itself the manufacture hardly lasted so long as in other pottery
districts. There was, in fact, in Staffordshire, another ware
contemporary with the productions of the " Toft school," the
early picturesque delft ware, of which an example is given in
Fig. 3°-
Another mode in which coloured slips were employed to
decorate rough earthenware vessels, chiefly large dishes, may be
described here. A " bat " of clay was taken and pressed into an
intaglio mould or "form." When dry and hard the piece was
removed from the mould, and coloured slips were poured into the
depressions, the limits to their flow being sharply defined by the
ridges on the piece, much in the same way that the cloisons
of an enamel on metal form the boundaries of the designs. As
a number of copies could be taken from a single mould, the
variety of pattern seen in these copies arose simply from the
casual irregularity in the flow of the slips, and their differing hues.
Sometimes, however, small additional enrichments were introduced
by hand. These moulded pieces may always be distinguished
from the productions of the Toft school by the hollows on the
back.
One of the quaintest and most characteristic of these early
dishes belongs to T. Kendall, Esq., of Pickering, Yorkshire.
The rough brownish body, the white clay slip, and the yellow
glaze, do not differ from the specimens just described, but the
piece has been made on a form or mould, while the design is
quite original. The dish, which is l6j inches across, has a
border of small detached scrolls, in brown, on the white slip
ground. The central, or main decoration, represents a plant
Fig. 16.— DISH OF SLIP WARE. Willett Collection.
r
my
Fir> . iy ._ FOUNTAIN OF SLIP WARE. Willf.tt Colkfction.
\
I
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)
18.— FRAGMENT OF SLIP WARE DISH. Museum ok Practical Geology.
Fig. 19.— BOWL, SLIP WARE, 1755. Museum of Practical Geology.
EARLY SLIP WARES.
with a single stem from which spring some leaves and three large
flowers, the centres of which resemble human heads : on either
side of the uppermost flower is a dove. An oblong label bearing
the letters S. M. occupies the middle of the dish. The details
of the design are slightly sunk in the white slip, but they are
bordered on either side by a ridge, the sunk space between
being filled in with an ochre-yellow, or a deep brown clay. A
tradition connecting this dish with Rievaulx Abbey cannot be
sustained.
An almost exact counterpart of this dish (Fig. 14), is in the
Willett Collection. The same initials (S. M.) occur on this speci-
men, and also on a similar dish, shown in Fig. 15, which like-
wise' belongs to Mr. Willett. This example is dated 1726, and
so affords good evidence of the late period, to which this archaic
and rough style of decoration was continued. A fourth dish of
this class (Fig. 16) has the initials R. S., possibly those of Ralph
Shaw, or of Richard Simpson, of liurslem, who are both known
to have been working during the early part of the eighteenth
century. Those dishes above named which bear the initials
S. ML have been assigned to the Cock Pit Hill pottery, in Derby.
If this attribution be correct, they may have been made by a
potter of the name of S. Mier, for it is known that one John Mier
was working there in 172 1, and one of these dishes bears the date
1726. On the other hand, there are some grounds for considering
these moulded dishes to have been made at Tickenhall.
Other illustrations of the use of slip in decoration, are furnished
by the large fountain in the Willett Collection, shown in Fig. 17 :
this is dated 1678. The coating of slip has been cut away in
the fragment (from Jermyn Street, Fig. 18), while a late example
of the same sort is given in the bowl from the same collection
(Fig. 19) : this is of the year 1755.
The cup or tyg, shown in Fig. 20, is interesting as bearing the
name of the person-Anne Draper-for whom it was made. It
is an example of the two modes of using slip as a decoration.
28
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
In several of the churchyards of the potteries — Burslem,
Wolstanton, and others— there were many earthenware headstones,
of common red or brown pottery— some having inscriptions and
ornaments in relief of the same material, some in white slip, and
some inlaid. The dates of these memorials range from 17 18
to 1767, but one is as late as 1828. Of similar character, but
earlier date, are the wall-tablets, bearing initials of builder or
owner and a date, which are found inserted in walls of houses in
the district. Both tombstones and tablets are represented in the
Liverpool Museum.
A rare specimen of old English pottery of this type is in the
British Museum. Possibly it once formed part of a tombstone
or memorial wall-tablet — a supposition which its gabled top and
its inscriptions suggest. The material is a coarse clay covered
with white slip and glazed yellow. Incised patterns and letter-
ing include, at the summit of the gable, the date 1695 ; below this
the initials E. E. 5 then some floral designs on either side of a
bird ; lastly, on an oblong strip, narrower than the gable, two
lines of inscription and one of vandyked bordering. The in-
scription is : —
When this V.C.
Remember Mee.
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CHAPTER IV.
VARIEGATED WARES.
Marbled ware — Combed ware — Agate ware — Tortoiseshcll ware.
There are some costrels and pilgrim's bottles extant, dating
from the sixteenth century, if not the fifteenth, which illustrate
the ornamental employment of two different clays of the same
consistency but burning to a different colour. The marbled
surfaces of these vessels show reddish veins clouded with a dull
yellow or grey — these hues being produced by natural clays. When
rich iron ores and the oxides of manganese and cobalt began to be
used for colouring the surface of earthenware and its lead glaze,
the notion of tinting the clays themselves suggested itself. Thus
several clays, some naturally and some artificially coloured, would
be at the disposal of the potter, to be used either for decorating
the surface, as in the process of "marbling" and "combing," or
for the manufacture of the ware itself, as in solid " agate " ware.
Some of the seventeenth and eighteenth century vessels discussed
in the chapter on slip wares, show examples of marbling and of
combing. In the Jermyn Street Collection are several good
specimens, such as the posset-pot (Fig. 21) with two handles, and
the piggin with upright handle. (Fig. 22). These marbled wares
come nearer to the so-called tortoiseshell wares than to agate
wares. But in marbling, opaque slips as well as transparent
colours (or glazes) were used, the whole surface being subsequently
30
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
glazed, at first by the common galena in powder, afterwards by
dips of prepared liquid glazes. The marbling process was one
of the many methods of ornamenting pottery which Wedg-
wood perfected j and he did so in this case without destroying
its originality and thoroughly English character. More will be
said on this subject when we speak later on concerning the pro
ductions of Wedgwood and his followers. In the Jermyn Street
Collection, G 54, is an early marbled piece: 75 and 77, are
late examples.
Combed ware, made by means of a light slip upon a dark body,
or vice versd, was one of the commonest and earliest kinds of
decorated pottery; it is still made to some extent. Not infre-
quently early vessels decorated with slip were also decorated with
combed work. The posset-pot with two handles (Fig. 23) and an
early fragment (G 42) in the Jermyn Street Collection are good
examples of combing. It diners from solid agate ware, not only
in being a mere surface decoration, but also because the two clays
used are in different conditions of fluidity, one being a slip, the
other a soft plastic mass. These were combed together by drag-
ging over the wet surface a suitable brush of leather, wood, or
metal. This dragging was sometimes in more than one direction :
when the course taken was curved, the effect was much like that
of marbling.
At first, for making solid agate ware or onyx ware, two natural
clays were employed, layers of different thicknesses being laid
upon one another, and then cross slices cut off with a wire. The
striped " bats " thus got were pressed into moulds, dried, and then
glazed with lead ore. The earliest specimens are extremely rough
and, it must be owned, not beautiful, chiefly from the ungainly
forms of the pieces and the excessive breadth of the layers of
contrasting clays. But when, in the hands of such accomplished
workmen as Dr. Thomas Wedgwood, Thomas Wheildon, and Josiah
Wedgwood, the preparation and cutting of the clays became more
delicately performed, agate wares were produced of exquisite
..-POSSET POT, MARBLED. Misecm of Practical Geoux; y.
pi
Fig.
Fig. 23.— POSSET POT, WITH COMBING. Museum of Practical Geology.
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VARIEGATED WARES.
31
refinement, and even beauty. We engrave (Fig. 24) a speci-
men of this kind, doubtless by Wheildon, a teapot in the South
Kensington Museum (No. 1 5 1-*74). The fine wavy lines of col-
oured clays are disposed in countless folds with an irregularity
just sufficient to secure picturesqueness without grotesqueness.
There is no violent contrast between the darker and lighter
lines, not merely because they are extremely thin, but because the
whole of the patterning is brought together by means of a glaze
tinted blue with a pinch of zaffre. Pieces of the same style but
glazed yellow are not so pleasing in appearance.
From the mode of mixing the clays necessary in true agate ware
the best-marked pieces were turned, and not thrown or pressed
into moulds. It will be seen that the veinings are always confused
in the handles even of the best pieces, because of the necessity
for pressing and squeezing them during the shaping operation.
Still the use of moulds was common — sauce-boats, and straight-
sided coffee and tea pots being frequently made of shapes which
could not be thrown or turned. Good examples of agate ware
are to be found in the knife and fork hafts, which were made in
large numbers towards the middle of the last century. Solid agate
ware is well represented in the Schreiber Collection. Mr. H.
Willett and Mr. L. Solon have some good pieces, but there is no
doubt that perfect specimens are rare. The best foreign imitations
of it were those of Castellet and Apt, in the Department of
Vaucluse, France.
There are a few peculiar modes of using coloured clays in
decorating earthenware which may fitly be noticed here. One
process consisted in the production of a tessellated surface of
small angular masses of tinted clays affixed to the exterior of the
vessels and then glazed. Sometimes the tessellae presented a
perfectly level surface, as in specimens of this kind of granite
ware made by Ralph Wood, of Burslem ; and in the later pro-
ductions of the Leeds pottery. Sometimes the surface was quite
angular and rough. Reference may be made to the Jermyn Street
3?
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Collection for examples of both varieties (G 364, 365, 366 ;
R 44, 45)-
From agate ware we naturally pass to the mottled, cloudy, and
variegated wares, without definite pattern, which are often grouped
under the name of tortoiseshell ware, and being commonly
attributed to a single potter, are frequently spoken of as "Wheil
don " ware. There is no doubt that Mr. Thomas YVheildon of
Little Fenton was one of the best potters of his day. He was at
work in 1740, and did not die until 1798. His early productions
were agate knife-hafts and snuff-boxes j toys and chimney orna-
ments either of coloured clays, or coloured by zaffre, manganese,
and copper ; and tortoiseshell and melon plates with ornamented
edges, the rims being generally divided into six escallops.
Wheildon also made black-glazed tea, chocolate, and coffee pots,
and also many of those with crabstock handles and spouts of
leafy forms, and with green and mottled glazes. The make of
some of these articles was improved by Josiah Wedgwood during
the time he was in partnership with Wheildon, 1752 to 1759.
But there were other makers of these wares besides Wheildon, so
the custom among connoisseurs of attributing all tortoiseshell and
agate wares to one potworker cannot be correct. Ralph Wood of
Buislem, and Thomas Alders and Daniel Bird of Cliff Bank,
were amongst the many contemporaries of Wheildon, who are
known to have made a large quantity of wares with mottled and
cloudy glazes. But notwithstanding this, the first rank on
account both of the extent and of the merit and variety of his
manufacture, must be assigned to Wheildon. His perforated
double teapots of rich tortoiseshell ware, with his beautiful
octagonal plates, showing the same rich glaze, have never been
surpassed; the latter are now rarely met with, though inferior
pieces, with one colour only, or with two or three colours rather
roughly and mechanically mottled, are not uncommon. But the
deep soft glaze of the best sort is at once the admiration of
modern collectors and the despair of modern potters. Good
Fig. 25.— COFFEE POT, WHEILDON WARE. South Kensington IfUBBVM,
No. 3101 '53.
my
VARIEGATED WARES.
33
plates and dishes of this quality exist chiefly in private cabinets;
they are thirteen and three-quarter and eight and three-quarter
inches in diameter. No London museum contains a specimen.
They may be known from the inferior and from the later pieces
by their flatness and by the breadth of their horizontal rims,
which are always bordered by applied strips with transverse
grooves. Four-fifths of the surface is covered with a flooded
mass of rich manganese brown colour — a hue which can be
imitated in oil colours by a mixture of madder brown and ivory
black. There is usually an irregular V-shaped pattern of a light
hue resembling raw sienna, and about this and elsewhere on the
surface there are soft splashes of copper-green and cobalt-blue,
the latter being sparingly introduced, and of a soft indigo-like
tint. The lead glaze (with the underlying colours) is finely
crackled or crazed ; the whole effect is rich and soft to a remark-
able degree. A number of specimens of this high quality were
dispersed in Oxford in 1865-6. Some of these, with many pieces
of similar character, but in different forms, constituting altogether
the finest gathering of tortoiseshell and allied glazes conceivable,
perished in the Alexandra Palace fire of 1873. Amongst them
was a pigeon-house with many birds about it, and bearing above
the door, impressed in the paste, " A New Pavilion." Tea-pots,
pickle and sweetmeat trays, milk jugs, cornucopia;, baskets, and
sauce-boats, were largely represented in this collection. Some of
the later and inferior plates of this type are inscribed, amongst
the border ornaments, with the words " Success to the King of
Prussia and his Forces"; the date 1757 is also sometimes
introduced.
The pine-apple, maize, melon, and cauliflower ware belongs
here ; much of it was made by Wheildon. The modelling of the
pieces is excellent, while the contrast between the creamy yellow
and rich leafy green which they exhibit, is fresh and pleasing. The
cauliflower and some of the other patterns attributed to Wheildon
are found also, though rarely, upon white salt-glazed stoneware.
34
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE,
It should be added here that an inferior tortoiseshell ware was
made at Liverpool.
Of the cloudy or mottled ware with a glaze of one colour,
though of differing depths in different parts, the best example we
know is in the Schreiber collection. It is a large covered bowl
decorated with foliage in relief, and covered with a purplish-brown
glaze of rich quality.
There is good reason to believe that a peculiar and very scarce
kind of pottery of a clear orange brown tint with yellowish
applied foliage, is also the work of Wheildon ; the illustration
(Fig. 25) represents a coffee-pot in the South Kensington
Museum.
CHAPTER V.
LAMBETH DELFT WARE.
Candlesticks— Wine-bottles— Coloured delft— Dishes— Pill-slabs.
Much obscurity hangs about the early potteries of Lambeth.
That one Edward Warner of Lambeth had sold potter's clay
there to London potters at least as early as 1668, and had also
exported large quantities of the same material to potteries in
Holland, does not conclusively prove that earthenware or stone-
ware was made in Lambeth. But from the preamble to a patent
granted in 1676, 1 it appears that John Ariens van Hamme, a
Dutch potter, who had taken out an English patent on April 23rd,
1 67 1, for the "art of makeinge tiles, and porcelane, and other
earthenwares, after the way practised in Holland," had settled at
Lambeth. So that, while the assertion, sometimes made, that
hard earthenware glazed with salt, that is, stoneware, was made
at Lambeth in the seventeenth century has received no confirma-
tion either from the evidence of fragments found in the locality or
from probable tradition, there are many reasons for accepting as
true the statement that there were delft potteries in Lambeth in
1 No. 191, October 27, 1676.
36
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
the seventeenth century. Incidentally, indeed, we learn that at
the close of that century there was at least one potworks there,
for in the year 1699 Savory tried his new steam-engine in a pottery
at Lambeth. But we cannot fix the date of the establishment of
the Lambeth delftworks by any satisfactory evidence, although
the mug in Mr. Willett's collection inscribed William Lamboth,
1650, the candlestick with the Fishmongers* Arms and the letters
W. W. E., and date 1648 (Jermyn Street, Y 5), (Fig. 26), and the
mug inscribed William and Elizabeth Burges, 24th August 1631
(Jermyn Street, Y 11), point, like the wine-pots to be described
presently, to an earlier date than that of J. A. van Hamme's
patent. All this ware is of one sort and style, but it occurs in
a considerable number of forms. The body is of a pale buff tint,
and like the Bristol delft of the first half of the eighteenth
century, harder, and with less lime than the corresponding Dutch
ware : the enamel is also generally whiter and more opaque than
that of the common foreign specimens. The more decorated or
ornamental pieces of Lambeth delft may be designated as wine
jugs, pill-slabs, large dishes or platters, and posset-pots. Of the
wine-jugs a large number of pint and half-pint sizes are extant.
Some of these are plain, but many are inscribed not only
with the name of the wine they were intended to contain,
but also with the date of their manufacture (or possibly the date
of bottling). Their form and character may be learnt from
Fig. 27, representing an example in the South Kensington
Museum collection.
The following list of these Lambeth wine-vessels includes all
the named and dated specimens with which I am acquainted.
However, there are many similar wine-pots of different sizes but
perfectly plain; there are also many others known which bear
dates with initials or devices, but are without the name of the
intended contents. The lettering, it should be stated, is in blue
over the white stanniferous enamel, but under the thin lead glaze.
The jars or jugs for sack and for white wine are more numerous
LAMBETH DELFT WARE.
37
and the majority of them earlier in date than those for claret; the
dates fall between 1641 and 1663 : —
Whit Wine 1641 1 Sacki644 3 Claret 1648 5
Whit 1641 21 n l6 45 2 if l6 5i*
1644 3 »l l6 46 10 » i 662 ?
1646 s „ 1647 6 9 . * 66 3 13
1647 4 „ 1648 7
1648 ^ „ 1649 0,0 11
1649 6 7 i6 5 o« 59
16528 „ 1652^23
,656 1° 6 if 1656 6
„ 1657 2
Dr. Diamond has a curious perforated bin label of delft ware
much like that of Lambeth. It is inscribed with SACK in blue.
It, with his SACK jug of 1647, came from the collection of
Horace Walpole.
Amongst the dated specimens of Lambeth ware, which were
destroyed at the burning of the Alexandra Palace, the following
wine-jugs may be recorded: —
P
A G Claret
1639 1663
Of the same manufacture two drinking cups may be named,
one inscribed, Elizabeth Handley, 1646 ; the second, L D., 1662.
Another dated specimen of Lambeth ware which perished with
the above pieces, was a large dish boldly painted with shields of
arms and various emblems. It bore the legend : EARTH : 1 : am :
1 The Schreiber collection. * R. H. Soden-Smith collection.
1 Dr. J. Evans collection. 4 Museum of Practical Geology.
6 Norwich Museum. 1 H. Willett collection.
7 A. W. Franks collection. 8 South Kensington Museum.
* Dr. H. W. Diamond collection. 10 H. Griffith collection.
u M. Solon collection. 12 Mechanics' Institute, Hanley.
11 W. Edkins collection.
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
et : is : most : trwe : desdan : me : not : for : soo : ar : yov.
Jan. 16th, 1660. It bore also, on a scroll, the names, GORG :
AND : ELLIZABETH : STERE.
Mr. J. Evans of Hemel Hempstead, besides the four specimens
already noted as in his collection, possesses a wine-jug of the usual
pattern and size with T p ^ j66q ^ on a blue and buff escutcheon.
Of other early pieces of Lambeth ware, those in Mr. A. W.
Franks' collection may be named. A shaped oblong dish bears
the date 1666 under the letters SH ; a large tray with six upright
pierced sides is lettered and inscribed M ;-T. In the same collec-
1679 L
tion occur plates having these dates SR I W IE EM 1742.
1691 1693 1698 1724
A very curious puzzle cup on an elaborately ornamented foot has
the initials I. W., and the date 1674. A still earlier cup has the
bakers' arms and the date 1657. This last date belongs to the
time during which the well-known wine-pots were being made,
1639 t0 1666.
The following pieces of dated delft ware in the Willett collection
we are inclined to assign to Lambeth : —
JOHN LEMAN
A cup 1634
P
A dish 0 1
164S
B
A 2-handled cup E D
with a spout 1657
A fountain
A wine jug
G F
1641
K
W E
1652
A flower-holder D P
like a book 1658
A flcnver-holder
like a book
An octagonal
plate
P
R E
1672
M S
1686
A deep dish
ivith coat
of arms
16RK80
Fig. 28.— DISH, LAMBETH DELFT. Willett Collection.
G
LAMBETH DELFT WARE.
39
There are some large plates and dishes with elaborate designs
in blue, and sometimes in green, yellow, orange and puce, on a
white tin enamel ground, which we feel inclined to attribute to
Lambeth ; they are certainly English, and, like the Dutch pieces,
are enamelled at the back.
In the Jermyn Street collection, a dish (Y 34) 14I inches, re-
presents the walk to Emmaus ; in the clouds is the word GOD ;
the piece is dated 1653. Another dish (Y 36) bears the arms of
the City of London in blackish blue and is inscribed ANNO 1654
LONDE ; a third dish (Y 49) is oval (19 J inches by 16 J) and is
a copy of one of B. Palissy's works. It is painted in pale blue on
a somewhat greenish enamel; its date is 1697. There is a re-
cumbent female figure in low relief in the centre surrounded by
five amorini ; the border has eight sunk wells with birds, masks,
and flowers; a similar dish is in the British Museum. The
figure here given (Fig. 28) is from a specimen of somewhat the
same character in Mr. Willett's collection. The Temptation of
Eve is here rendered with less uncouth quaintness than in the
rougher variety of delft ware which we incline to refer to a
Staffordshire origin : the border is very well designed and recalls
the style of some designs found on Italian majolica. Another
plate or dish, which may also be of Lambeth delft, is shown in
*'g- 29. The original is in the British Museum. The style
here again is Italian not Dutch. In the centre Jacob's Dream
is represented ; the border has four symbolical figures in oval
medallions divided by rich renaissance ornaments of animal
forms. It is dated 1660.
Many " pill-slabs " have been assigned to Lambeth. They are
represented in the Jermyn Street collection by two specimens
(Y 6 and Y 7) both bearing the arms of the Apothecaries'
Company. The tin-glaze on these slabs is duller and of a much
less opaque white than that on the wine-jugs before described.
They have been claimed for both Bristol and Liverpool.
After a good deal of hesitation we incline to give to I^mbeth
G 2
40
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
the delft puzzle-jugs with openwork necks and a flower or device
painted on the enamel in front.
Besides the white tin-glazed ware, Lambeth produced some very
curiously coloured and painted pieces. Some of the small self-
coloured jugs which have puzzled collectors are doubtless to be
attributed to Lambeth. The forms as well as the body and
white glaze are identical with those of the wine-pots and other
vessels already named. A small silver-mounted jug of this kind is
in the Willett collection j on the white ground there is a sprinkled
coating of manganese purple. A similarly treated decoration of
cobalt blue, or blue and yellow, and an even tint of turquoise
green also occur. Sometimes these colours are found upon
figures, vases, &c. Mr. Willett has two cats, one blue, the other
blue and yellow, which seem to belong here ; they bear these
figures and dates : —
S B
R I RE
1672 1674
Some further evidence, not merely of the existence of potteries
at Lambeth but of the nature of their productions was furnished
in the fragments of white enamelled ware and wasters discovered
during the progress of the Albert Embankment works, and the
re-building of many premises in the neighbourhood of High Street.
Another kind of proof of the existence of these Lambeth pot-
works is afforded by what may be called incidental biographical
references. For instance, one James Doe, a native of Lambeth,
was apprenticed to a painter in china and earthenware at Mr.
Griffith's Delft Pottery, High Street, Lambeth, and afterwards
was in the employment of Wedgwood. And we know also that
about the middle of the eighteenth century (if not before) this
Griffith had a " Delft Pottery ■ in IJigh Street. Later on in the
century another potwork was founded (Coades') where W. J-
Coffee, the clever modeller who afterwards worked at Derby, was
employed for some time.
LAMBETH DELFT WARE.
41
In 1776, Griffith and Morgan advertised in Felix Farley's
Bristol Journal for a stone kiln burner, a top-ware turner and an
"ingenious painter." The advertisement is dated from their pot-
house, Lambeth, and concludes with the words, "These men must
understand their business well, as the Company have indifferent
hands enough already."
Lambeth still continues the seat of important potworks. The
factory of Messrs. Doulton, "The Lambeth Pottery," was estab.
lished in 1818: that of Messrs. Stiff and Sons, "The London
Pottery," as early, it is said, as 1 75 1. Mr. Henry Doulton, about
the year 1870, introduced into his works (previously confined to
the manufacture of drain-pipes and other rough ware, most of it
salt-glazed stoneware), an entirely new class of pottery of high qua-
lity not merely as to fabric but in its artistic excellence. It may
be said to have been founded in a measure upon the German
stonewares, but it possesses merits as to colour, form, and decora-
tion, which are entirely original. Some of the artists who design
it, such as Mr. George Tinworth and Miss Hannah B. Barlow,
have acquired a high reputation. Besides this salt-glazed pottery
some of the ornamental ware made by Doulton is unglazed stone-
ware ; some is glazed with a felspathic mixture, and some is lead-
glazed on a soft earthenware body, and is decorated under the
gla7e. Of course the further consideration of this entirely modern
development of ceramic art at Lambeth does not fall within the
scope of this work.
It is right to say here that a Staffordshire origin has been
claimed for some of the large painted delft dishes usually attri-
buted to Lambeth ; but which show less successful following of
Italian and Dutch models than those made at Lambeth. They
are rough pieces enamelled on the face only, the back or reverse
side being simply glazed with a transparent lead glaze, sometimes
tinted with the colours used on tortoiseshell ware. The drawing
on these pieces is quaint and crude ; the colours are dull, the
trees are commonly painted with a sponge, the enamel ground is
4-
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
a dirty greenish white, the rims are usually adorned with blue
dashes, while the edges are not infrequently indented. The sub-
jects portrayed are — The Temptation of Eve, and portraits of
Charles II., William and Mary, James II., Queen Anne, Prince
Eugene, the Duke of Marlborough, and other celebrated person-
ages of the day. Examples of these dishes (which are about
thirteen inches in diameter) are in the Jermyn Street collection,
Y42 to Y47. Fig. 30 shows one of these, an equestrian portrait
in blue, puce, and orange, of William III. ; it is lettered K. W
There are specimens in the British Museum and South Kensing-
ton Museum, and in the collections of H. Willett, M. L. Solon,
and Dr. Diamond.
Fig. 3C.-DISH, WILLIAM THE THIRD, STAFFORDSHIRE DELFT. Museum
of Practical Geology.
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY STONEWARES.
Dwight of Fulham — Place of York.
The wares made at Fulham towards the close of the seventeenth
century present features of peculiar interest. The material, the
glaze, and the modelling, all offer points of importance, but
there are personal incidents connected with the Fulham potworks
which lend unusual distinction to this ceramic centre. The
founder of the pottery was one John Dwight, M.A., of Christ
Church, Oxford. His patent, granted 13th April, 1671, was for
"the mistery of transparent earthenware, commonly knowne by
the names of porcelaine or china, and of stoneware, vulgarly
called Cologne ware." By porcelain we must here understand
something more than fine stoneware, although at that time the
perfectly opaque red and brown wares of China and Japan, such
as Elers so perfectly imitated, were called porcelain. Yet, after
all, Dwight did nearly approach success in the making of a hard
translucent ware similar to hard oriental porcelain. The applied
ornaments on his grey stoneware jugs or flasks, and even the
substance of some of his statuettes, were distinctly porcellanous.
The statuette (in the South Kensington Museum) of a girl with
flowers and a skull at her feet, a portrait of his daughter Lydia
( Fi g- 3*)> i s °f tms class * The otner extant figures of Dwight's
manufacture, with the exception of the recumbent half-length
44
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
effigy of his daughter (South Kensington Museum) are of more
ordinary stoneware, opaque and buff or brownish. The Meleager
and the Prince Rupert, both in the British Museum, are repro-
duced here (Figs. 32 and 33). Without doubt they constitute,
with the other specimens of the same trouvaille, a convincing
proof of the high artistic and technical excellence of the Fulham
productions ; nothing in English earthenware or stoneware can
touch them. The half-length effigy above named (South Kensing-
ton Museum) is inscribed in the clay " Lydia Dwight, dyd March
3, 1673."
We do not know the dates of the birth and death of John
Dwight. If it be true (Meteyard, Life of Wedgivood, i. p. 108)
that he had u succeeded as early as 1640 in making a few pieces
of imperfect porcelain," the statement that he died about the year
1737 is clearly erroneous. We imagine that the Margaret Dwight
to whom the Fulham pottery belonged at this date was a grand-
daughter of the founder of the works ; this conjecture is confirmed
by her subsequent history. It is incredible that she was a sister
of the Lydia Dwight who died in 1673, at tne a S e °f about fifteen.
If so, she must have been about seventy at the date of her
marriage with Mr. White. It is affirmed that the Fulham works
remained long in the possession of Margaret White's descendants ;
in 1864 they pissed into the hands of Mr. C. J. C. Bailey. Some
of the notebooKS of Dwight are extant ; they do not appear to
contain any exact information as to the materials which he used,
or the processes of his manufacture. His second patent of 16S4
is not much more explicit than his first.
Almost all the authentic pieces of Dwight's Fulham ware, now
identified, came from a series of specimens which had been
secured by Mr. C. W. Reynolds; they were dispersed in 187 1.
The specimens in the collections of the British Museum, South
Kensington Museum, Mr. A. W. Franks, Mr. H. Willett, and the
author, came from this source. Other authentic examples were
discovered in a cellar belonging to the old works ; most of these
'I
I
/
i
'l
)
EARLY STONEWARES. 4o
are in the possession of the present owner of the pottery, but in
the Schreiber collection are some of them, including the jug repre-
sented in Fig. 34. This piece can hardly be distinguished from the
foreign pieces of stoneware which it was intended to imitate and
replace. A small silver-mounted jug with ribbed neck is a type
of a fine kind of pale stoneware assignable to Dwight's Fulham
pottery j this specimen (Fig. 35) is also in the Schreiber collection.
The Jermyn Street collection also includes a good many pieces (X
1 to X 10) doubtfully attributable, for the most part, to Fulham.
Amongst them, however, are two pieces of earthenware of late-
manufacture and some ointment pots of coarse paste, coated with
a tin glaze. It may be interesting to add that the three pieces of
Dwight's ware in the South Kensington Museum cost, respectively
—the statuette, 31/. 10s. ; the recumbent effigy, 158/.; and the
bust of King James II., 31/. ioj.
Salt-glazed stoneware is still made at the Fulham works, which
are situated in part upon the same ground as those of Dwight.
Here Mr. R. W. Martin, since 1880 of Southall pottery, had his
pieces fired.
Two very small cups or pans for artists' or enamellers' paints
were found in 1875 at Sand's End, Fulham, in gravel twelve feet
below the surface. The locality is within 100 yards of Wands-
worth new bridge. The material of one of these cups is a
translucent, mottled, unglazed, porcelain, not unlike Derbyshire
alabaster ; the other and smaller object more resembles stoneware,
but is glazed with a grey translucent porcellanous substance. It
does not seem unreasonable to conjecture that these curious pieces
are relics of Dwight's experimental trials of bodies and glazes.
place's ware.
There is a very near resemblance between some of the pieces
of Dwight's ware and the solitary authenticated example of Place's
ware with which we are acquainted. In both materials we have a
h 2
4*
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE,
body somewhere between fine stoneware and hard porcelain, of a
pale grey colour streaked with darker grey, black and brown : the
glaze is hard and thin. One of the very few extant specimens of
Place's ware is in the Jermyn Street Museum (Fig. 36), and was
presented by Mr. A. W. Franks: it came from Horace Walpole's
collection at Strawberry Hill It is a handled coffee-cup two and
a half inches high, and of an elegant form : the same shape
occurs amongst pieces of Chinese origin of very translucent
creamy white porcelain. It is however not improbable that a few
of these translucent white cups and mugs, which connoisseurs have
assigned sometimes to China and sometimes to Place, may really
be attributable to "one Clifton " who is said by Ralph Thoresby
(in 17 14) to have improved upon the manufacture of Mr. Place
and to have thereby made a fortune. Mr. Francis Place, a son
of Mr. Rowland Place, of Dimsdale in the county of Durham,
was an attorney's clerk in London until 1665 \ he died in 1728.
1 Hiring some portion of these sixty-three years* Mr. Place devoted
much time to experimental pursuits : his pottery was made at the
Manor House, at York.
It has been stated that a few specimens of Place's ware are in
private hands ; it is desirable that this statement should be verified
and the pieces carefully examined.
K 'G. 34.— BELLA RM INK, FULHAM STONEWARE. Schreiber Collection.
Fie 35--JUG, FULHAM STONEWARE. Schreiber Collection.
CHAPTER VII.
ELERS AND HIS IMITATORS
John Philip Elers— Red Ware— Salt-glazing— Astbury's Ware.
There are two reasons for considering the ware introduced by
John Philip and David Elers now — that is, after having studied
the stoneware of Dwight and before describing the Staffordshire
salt-glazed ware. For it was first made a good many years after
the famous pieces of Fulham ware with which we are acquainted,
and it was the precursor of the most characteristic types of salt-
glazed Staffordshire ware. In fact the advent of J. P. Elers into
Staffordshire had a marvellous though not an immediate effect
upon the whole of the subsequent productions of the potteries.
It started the more intelligent and enterprising of the master
potters upon new lines, and these lines, though they had then
something of a foreign element in their beginnings, yet soon be-
came thoroughly English. There is, it is true, a great chasm
between the grand, massive, quaint yet clumsy, coarse and
cumbrous tygs or posset-pots of the latter half of the seven-
teenth century, and the dainty, light, and sharp-turned tea-sets of a
fine red stoneware that not even Wedgwood afterwards could
rival with all the appliances of a century later. No attention was
previously paid to the fineness of the body, or to the truth of the
forms into which it was thrown on the wheel : the ornament
might have been and often wis picturesque, but neither sharp in
43
ENGL IS II EA R THEN WARE.
execution nor graceful in design. Now Elers prepared his red
clay with extreme care, so as to reduce it to a uniform degree of
fineness. He used the lathe so as to turn his pieces into forms
far thinner and more uniformly exact in shape than any which the
wheel or whiiler could furnish. His ornaments were in keeping
with the fineness of the ware. They were impressed, upon lumps
of clay stuck upon the turned piece, by means of brass moulds or
stamps sharply cut or engraved with intaglio designs. A may-
blossom, a bird, an interlacement of curves, a cross formed of
fleur-de-lis, figured amongst his favourite devices: threads and
connecting lines were added by hand, while the superfluous clay
was scraped off from the edges of the reliefs by the use of a
small tool. But the ware was not always decorated with these
reliefs, for sometimes we find nothing more than a few lines or
lathe-turned bands upon it. The handles and spouts of the tea-
pots were never moulded, but always hand-made and of very
simple forms without ornament.
Although we have a good deal of traditional and other evi-
dence as to Elers' productions, it is remarkable that we are not
able to point to a single bit of red ware and say without a
doubt that it is of his manufacture. No name or date occurs
upon any specimen : the imitation Chinese mark in the seal
character was used by other and later potters, though it
probably was also employed by Elers himself. Further, no
fragments of real ware have been yet discovered near the site of
Elers' works at Bradwell Wood, nor at or near his house or store
at Dimsdale. Systematic excavations at these two localities
cannot fail to clear up some of our doubts as to the true attri-
bution of pieces now commonly given to Elers and his imitators
and successors indiscriminately. At present when we think that
we have identified an undoubted piece of the original ware we arc
often suddenly disillusionised by, e.g. finding a piece identical
in form and decoration but of a body which is known to have
been devised after Elers' day, or with ornaments of an historical
-CUP, PLACE'S STONEWARE. Museum ok Practical Geolo«;v.
TEAPOT, STYLE OF ELERS. Soi tii Kensington Museum.
No. 3 %5'5:-
ELERS AND HIS IMITATORS. 49
character, which refer to a time when Elers had left Staffordshire
and abandoned the potter's art for another occupation.
We have said that a foreign element is betrayed in the Elers
ware. The style of the stamped ornaments is German or Flemish,
the form and substance of his tea ware is taken from Chinese
models. But his skill so modified and transformed these exotic
elements, that they became merged, at all events in the course of
the next twenty or thirty years r in a style which could not be any
longer called foreign.
There are good reasons for supposing John Philip Elers to have
n.ade several other wares besides the red stoneware, or red
porcelain and red china, as it was called at the time. Mr. Solon
suggests that he may have been in communication with Dwight of
Fulham before he settled in Staffordshire. If so, he may have
learnt from him the process of glazing with salt, though he may have
brought it over with him from Holland. Anyhow we feel bound
to admit that Elers introduced salt-glazing into Staffordshire. We
think he also used the common lead-glazing with tortoiseshcll
mottlings ; not improbably he made a black ware which Wedg-
wood ultimately developed into his fine dense black basaltes.
As to authentic specimens of Elers' ware, we can but point to
the two specimens of early red ware in the South Kensington
Museum and the thirteen specimens in Jermyn Street, and say
that amongst these there are some pieces which are not improbably
the work of Elers himself. It is not likely that he turned out his
red china for more than twenty years, 1690— 1 710, so that we find
it impossible to assign to him the tea-pot here figured (Fig. 37),
which represents, it is believed, the marriage of George II. But
in most points, if not in all, this well-preserved specimen may be
taken as an example of his style. Even if the king represented
upon it were intended for George L, the date of the piece could
not be earlier than 1714, four years after the pot works of Elers
had been abandoned by their founder.
It may be useful to recall here the specimens of red unglazcd
53
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
ware of Elers and his followers which were destroyed with the
Alexandra Palace. They were fifteen in number : of these, ten
small pieces, tea-pots, cups and saucers, sugar-bowls, milk-jugs and
flower-pots, partook of the characters belonging to early Elers' ware.
The others were large pieces— chocolate-pots from nine to twelve
inches high— or they were pieces covered with wavy engine-turning.
The story of the two brothers Elers has been related at length
by Mr. Jewitt in his Life of Josiah Wedgwood. It will suffice
here to state that they sprang from a noble family of Saxony,
which appears to have settled in Amsterdam, of which city their
father was Burgomaster. They are said to have come over to
England with William of Orange, or more probably just after his
establishment upon the English throne. Bradwell Wood, lying
some distance from the road between Wolstanton and Burslem,
furnished the Elers with the fine ferruginous clay they needed in
order to reproduce the red opaque china of the East. It was and
is a secluded spot, well suited for the purpose of a potwork
where every operation was to be conducted with secrecy. By
1692 or 1693 the manufacture had reached a high degree of
perfection, and was sold not only at Dimsdale, one mile from
the potworks, but in a warehouse or shop kept by David Elers in
the Poultry, London. The price of their tea-pots is said to have
ranged between twelve and twenty-five shillings each. Probably
the sale of these pieces at such a price was difficult j anyhow we
find that John Philip Elers left Staffordshire about the year 17 10
in by no means flourishing circumstances. He is said to have
gone to some glassworks at Chelsea, and then to have set up in
business for himself in Dublin as a dealer in china and glass.
But although J. P. Elers abandoned Staffordshire and practical
potting, his improvements were neither forgotten nor disused.
The careful levigation of the clays which he practised, the use of
the lathe and of metal stamps, and the process of salt-glazing,
were precious legacies to the district. Of some of the chief
successors of Elers we may now speak.
ELERS AND HIS IMITATORS.
The story of a potter, John Astbury by name, who, by
feigning idiocy, got admission into the works of Elers and there
learnt some of their processes, has been often told. He was a
man of shrewdness, possessing considerable powers of invention,
and, profiting by what he had found out from the Dutchmen,
soon modified and enriched their methods until he made a large
variety of cheap and curious wares. Never quite equal in fine-
ness of body and sharpness of ornament to the productions of
Elers, the works of Astbury are not mere imitations — at least the
majority of his extant pieces cannot be so called. For the paste
or body of his ware he used clays or mixtures of clays which
burnt to a red, fawn, yellow, buff, orange, or chocolate tint — some
of these colours being developed by the glaze. Generally his
ornaments were applied in Devon or pipe-clay and stamped.
They consisted of foliage and may flowers : crowns, harps,
shells, stags, lions, birds and heraldic ornaments. For the
inside of his tea-pots and other vessels he often used a wash of
white clay, and he was always making experiments in the mixing
and tempering of clays. Thus it was that he was led about 1720
to the use of a due proportion of ground flint in the body of the
ware to secure a higher degree of refractoriness in the kiln and
less shrinkage. To his son, Thomas Astbury, who commenced
business in 1723 at Shelton, may be attributed further improve-
ments in earthenware bodies. He first produced the " cream
r olour," which afterwards in Wedgwood's hands displaced almost
WJ other materials for useful table ware.
Mr. Solon has a large number of specimens of the work of the
cider Astbury, some of them having been identified by means of
Jragments disinterred from the site of his potworks at Shelton.
The "Porto Bello " bowl of red clay with white clay ornaments
(ships, &c), the whole lead-glazed, in the British Museum, is a
characteristic example of Astbury's work and bears the date Nov.
** e 22 » 1739. An unglazed saucer in the South Kensington Museum
£ 2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
and five pieces in Jermyn Street (G 48 to G 52) may safely be
assigned to the same potter.
Astbury's efforts to improve the staple productions of the pot-
works were, during his lifetime and after his death in 1743, taken
up and continued by other workers; Twyford, Dr. Thomas
Wedgwood, and Ralph Shaw of Burslem, may be named amongst
these. Shaw, though chiefly remembered for his litigious spirit,
seems to have produced some remarkable pieces of red or
chocolate ware coated all over with white clay, and subsequently
decorated by scratching through this white layer and revealing
the dark body beneath. The best example of his work which wc
know is a jug seven inches high in the possession of Mr. A. W.
Franks ; at least, this is the case, if, as we imagine, this piece be
not of Nottingham ware, with the appearance of which it has
some points in common. It is beautifully decorated with birds
and foliage in a somewhat Persian style.
CHAPTER VIII
WHITE STONEWARE.
Staffordshire Salt-glazed Ware, its origin, forms, and decoration— Notable
Examples and Collections.
A peculiarly fine stoneware, with a glaze formed by means of
common salt, was produced, chiefly in Staffordshire, between the
years 1690 and 1780; its manufacture at Burslem is said to have
lingered on so late as the year 1823. It is generally of a grey,
drab, or dull white colour, and so extremely hard, that it can but
just be scratched by quartz (rock crystal). Its specific gravity is
about 2*2. It may almost take rank as a porcelain, for thin
pieces are translucent, and if a little more alkali had entered into
its composition it would have been in chemical nature and
physical texture alike a veritable hard porcelain. Its glaze is un-
mistakable, being characterized by minute depressions which
give it the appearance of a piece of fine leather or the skin of an
orange. This appearance is caused by the high fusing point of
the glaze, and by its having been formed on the ware itself and
out of one of its constituents. In fact, the glaze was not applied
to the body of the ware before firing, but when the pieces had
been heated to a high temperature in the kiln, common salt was
thrown in, and, meeting with water-vapour, became decomposed
into hydrochloric acid which escaped, and soda, which attacking
the silica of the clay in the body, formed with it a silicate of soda
54
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
—a hard glass or glaze. This glaze varies in " grain " within wide
limits even on the different parts of a single piece; moreover it
was the custom of some of the potters to add a little red lead to
the salt thrown into the kiln, and this made the glaze smoother
and thicker. The perfection of salt-glazing is sometimes reached
on objects of common materials and common workmanship, even
on drain-pipes, filters, and chemical apparatus. In the old
Staffordshire ware it frequently combined perfect efficiency as a
protective coating with that exquisite half gloss which, without
interference from its own excessive brilliancy on the one hand,
or coarse irregularity on the other, brings out both the form and
the decoration of the body.
As to the body or paste of this salt-glazed ware, Shaw states
that it was successively made of—
Brick-earth and fine sand ;
Can-marl and fine sand ;
Grey coal-measures clay, and fine sand :
Grey clay and ground flint.
This last and most important improvement is attributed to
Astbury in 1720. The son of this Astbury introduced in 1725,
upon a dull cream-coloured body, a white wash of clay and flint.
The ground flints used in the body in lieu of sand amounted to
from 20 to 25 per cent.
The sharp archaic designs, the wafer like thinness, and the
other characteristics of this ware are perhaps best seen upon the
richly decorated sauce-boats, tea-pots and pickle or sweetmeat
trays which form the chief treasures of collectors of this beautiful
pottery. There can be no doubt that these things are far more
worthy of preservation than many of the English porcelains and
earthenwares which command high prices at sales and form the
usual objects of worship amongst the devotees of brie d brae.
They are original, but avoid meaningless extravagances of form
and decoration. Duly displayed upon the shelves of a cabinet
WHITE STONEWARE.
lined with puce-coloured velvet they hold their own in competition
with most of the highly esteemed wares of European origin.
The forms which this Staffordshire ware assumed may be
studied in the South Kensington and Jermyn Street Museums,
and in the museums of - Edinburgh and Dublin. Mr. H. Willett's
collection is perhaps the most extensive ; it is lent to the Brighton
Museum. Mr. L. Solon of Stoke has a very fine series of
specimens. The Schreiber collection is also rich in this ware.
The author's collection contains some important pieces. Amongst
these a very fine sauce-boat with raised lettering, figures and
ornaments upon it, is of considerable importance. It has two
handles and two spouts. Under each of the spouts is the
serpent tempting Eve ; in the several compartments of the sides
are figures of the Seven Champions of Christendom.
St ANTON
Y : I T.Y
St DAVID
WA LES
St ANDREW
SCO T
St GeorgE
St PATRIC
IREd K
St DENIS
FR E
a harp in the
4th compt.
St : IAMES
SP ANE
Another of these rare lettered pieces is a hexagonal tea-pot 1
of oriental character decorated with numerous figures and with
foliage. The six panels bear the following inscriptions explanatory
of the designs, (i) Old Vice Roy of Kanton. (2) Ambassadors
of Lammas. (3) Round Pepper. (4) G R A N D ■ T A RT A R -
H A M • C'HT N A* (5) China root. (6) Young Vice Roy of
Canton. The sugar-bason of the same set is without lettering,
but has six panels representing a tea party ; a drinking party ;
a wild beast hunt ; the Royal arms ; the Crucifixion ; Adam and
Eve and the serpent. There can be no doubt that these pieces
were made at the same potworks, and probably by the same
designer, as the beautiful sauce-boat with lettering and figures
representing the Seven Champions of Christendom.
1 In Dr. H. P. Blackmore's collection, Salisbury.
56
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Among the earlier pieces of salt-glazed white ware preserved in
collections, those with a drab body (washed sometimes on the inside
with a white slip) and applied stamped ornaments in a white body,
have been thought by some connoisseurs to date from the last
decade of the seventeenth century, and even to have been made
by J. P. Elers. We think they are assignable to the younger
Astbury. There is a fine series in the Jermyn Street collection.
Our figure (38) represents a vase and cover of this variety in the
South Kensington Museum. The same mode of decoration is
seen on a bottle (wholly white) in the. Schreiber collection (Fig.
39). The sweetmeat tray in the South Kensington Museum,
(Fig. 40) has been made in a brass mould; the tea-poy (Fig. 41)
probably in one of plaster.
Amongst the strange diversity of forms which this fine white
ware was made to assume, a notable specimen is preserved in the
Stoke Free Library. If one imagines a somewhat flattened
Chinese beaker with swollen middle to have been incrusted all
over with large overlapping leaves having serrated edges, some
notion may be formed of this curious specimen. It is, however,
a moulded not a built-up piece. I am indebted to Mr. L. Solon
of Stoke for an effective pen-and-ink sketch of this vase,
reproduced in Fig. 42.
In the Stoke Free Library there are some fine pieces of white
and drab stoneware. A beaker of Chinese form with a narrow
band in the middle is of unusual excellence. It bears some
small white applied ornaments on a drab ground. A still more
important example, if really of English make, is preserved in the
Mechanics Institution, Hanley. It is a mug decorated with two
bands of excellent ornament and a medallion in relief. This
piece is dated 1701 : my own impression is that this piece is
precisely such, in paste, and decoration, as might be attributed to
Elers. This view is not shared by some good judges, so it will be
safer not to affirm positively that this interesting piece is the earliest
known specimen of Staffordshire white stoneware.
Fk;. 42.— spill vask, white SALT-GLAZED ware,
STAFFORDSHIRE. Stoke Free Library.
WHITE STONEWARE. 57
Amongst the very numerous specimens of this white salt-glazed
ware destroyed at the Alexandra Palace fire in 1873, one dated
piece may be noted, viz., a circular ink-pot having an outer casing,
with perforated dots forming the letters and figures, I. B., 1742.
A mug with incised ornament in the Schreiber collection (Fig. 43)
is dated 1752, and the flask with " May flower " applied ornament
( Fi g- 39)> I759- 1 The large soup tureen (Jermyn Street collection)
bears the cursive letters J. B , and 1763. The popular subject of
the capture of Porto Bello by Admiral Lord Vernon belongs to
an early period, and bears occasionally the date 1739. During the
period 1740 to 1760 this white stoneware was undoubtedly not
only of high excellence but extremely popular. Shaw tells us
(p. 167) that it then "sold readily the day of drawing the oven."
Of figures in this salt-glazed white ware, the best known are a
pair in Turkish costume enamelled in rich colours. Two sets of
these, eight inches high, and a similar figure washed with grey-
brown and olive, and another uncoloured, were destroyed in the
Alexandra Palace fire ; another set is in the Schreiber collection.
Animals are not infrequent 5 among these, rabbits, cats, and sheep
occur ; and now and then a camel, a monkey, a swan, or a hawk.
A figure of this last subject is in the author's collection. It is 10
mches high, inclusive of the rocky base (coloured brown) on which
it stands. In the Schreiber collection are some richly coloured
small birds and other animals.
These figures are modelled with spirit, but are often wanting in
sharpness and accuracy of detail. Figures of a still earlier date,
and still rougher and ruder fashion, were, however, made in this
ware at Burslem. To this class belong the curious figures in
quaint costume of which two examples are in the Dresden
Museum (Enoch Wood collection), one example is in Mr. Willett's
collection, and another in that of Mr. Solon. A man and a
woman, sometimes accompanied by a third figure, are seated on
a high-backed bench or pew with ends ; the details of the four
1 Thomas Coxe's cup is dated 1758.
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
examples differ, but they are obviously the work of the same potter.
Mr. Solon's example is richly decorated with a brown ferruginous
colour in parts ; it has been beautifully etched (though reversed)
in the Art of the Old English Potter, plate xxix.
Tea-pots and other tea ware gave great scope for invention to the
salt-glaze designers. Heart-shape or lovers' tea-pots, and house
tea-pots are not rare. Fig. 44 represents one of the latter in the
Jermyn Street collection. Some of the house tea-pots were of more
complex design and with three stories, but all present the curious
and bizarre spout in which a mask, a bird's neck and bill, and an
arm, are strangely associated, as shown in our example.
There is every probability that those fine and rare pieces of
salt-glazed white ware, which are covered all over with a very deep
cobalt-blue glaze, and enamelled with ornaments in black and
opaque tin-white, were made about 1750 by William Littler of
Longton. *The decoration of these corresponds in many particulars
with that of the Longton Hall porcelain, described by Mr. J. E.
Nightingale as the work of W. Littler. Mr. Littler lived at
Brownhills near Burslem; his father was a potter. He began
business about the year 1745, and soon afterwards commenced
his experiments on porcelain. We may assign his blue-glazed
stoneware to a date between 1745 and 1750. The pieces
enamelled on the top of the blue glaze, and by means of a second
firing at a lower heat, are very rare 5 we doubt whether the recognised
specimens could not be counted on the fingers of one hand.
When one admires an early sharply-cut piece of salt-glazed
ware, one does not perhaps at once realise how many steps have
been taken in order to secure the final result. Let us see what
these steps in the process were. Firstly, a mould was carved or
cut in " intaglio," generally in some soft material such as native
gypsum, that is, alabaster. This carved mould consisted of two
or more pieces, flat or curved in accordance with the shape of the
vessel to be made. The' oval vessels required to be modelled in
two sections only, round in three, square in four sections for the
8
WHITE STONEWARE. S9
sides, with two or more other pieces for the base, top, and lid
The patterns cut in these slabs were somewhat limited in range
the pecten-shell, tendrils, leaves, coat armour, volutes, flutings'
diapers, frets, and such other designs as could be easily executed
by the graver, being found amongst those most frequently adopted
Instead of concealing the joinings between the sections of the
mould, these joinings often became positive features in the general
design, forming borders to the panels into which that design was
divided. Assuming the engraving of the several parts of the
mould to have been completed, the next step was to join them
together and to make from them a mould in relief called a block.
This was of clay, somewhat thick and in one piece. It was pressed
mto the mould, dried, and fired; occasionally the blocks thus
produced are found unglazed, but more commonly they are of
salt-glazed stoneware. The third step is now reached, the pre-
paration, from the "block" above described, of the pitcher mould.
This would of necessity be somewhat smaller than the original
model, but in other respects identical with it. Into this pitcher,
whether of porous terra-cotta, or of lead, brass or copper, or of
plaster of Paris, a liquid slip of prepared and mixed clay was
poured so as to deposit a thin film of clay upon the interior of the
Pitcher ; the surplus slip was poured out at once. After the film
or coating of clay in the pitcher mould had dried somewhat, a
fresh portion of liquid slip was poured in and out as before, this
operation being repeated until the desired thickness had been
attained. After further drying, the hollow casting was removed
from the mould, legs, handles, and spouts, with any finishing
touches or enrichments that were desired, were added, and then
the whole piece was fired and glazed with salt. Plaster moulds,
which were not introduced for this work before the period 1743
t0 1 7So, gave much less sharp impressions than those of terra-cotta
0r metal, and were often employed after they had become blunt
through frequent use. From this cause and from the abandon-
ment of the casting process, above described, in favour of the
6o
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
method of pressing (a lump of clay being pressed or moulded
within the model), there came about a general deterioration of
the Staffordshire stoneware, so far as sharpness is concerned,
between the years 1750 and 1780. This was one cause of its
decline in public estimation. But there were two other causes at
least, one being the introduction of more showily coloured
productions, especially of those which were printed, and the other
being the perfection of surface secured by the lead-glaze of
Wedgwood's Queen's ware. Any one who has passed a silver
spoon over a salt-glazed soup-plate, or used a knife and fork upon
a meat-plate of the same ware, will understand the disadvantage
under which the peculiar glaze of white stoneware labours ; that
for some purposes it should have been superseded is not
remarkable.
The South Kensington Museum possesses several good moulds
of the white stoneware, chiefly from the Wood collection. In one
case there is a very sharp mould of a cup (3098 '52), and the
cup taken from it (3159 '52). What would have been a plain rim
has been ornamented with a rough pattern in "scratch blue."
There are also in the same collection two very fine and sharp
moulds of sauce-boats (2778 '52 and (3144 '5 2 )- Another mould,
for a small milk-jug, bears the initials of the designer on two
bare flat spaces on opposite sides— R. W. — these probably stand
for Ralph Wood, the Burslem potter, whose group of the Vicar
and Moses (Fig. 57) is well known. The flat spaces on which
the initials above named are cut would be concealed in the jug
formed from this mould by the feet, which were subsequently
applied on these spots. It would be interesting to see whether
such marks could not be detected on other pieces by removing
their legs or supports. It should be added that the mould in
question bears the date 1749 upon the flat space intended to
receive afterwards the third leg of the piece.
Besides the moulds for salt-glazed white ware in the Jermyn
Street and South Kensington collections, there are a good many
WHITE STONEWARE. 6l
specimens in the public and private museums of the Staffordshire
potteries. The Wedgwood Memorial Institute at Burslem, has
a mould for one of the pieces, bearing the inscription ^ELLO
TAKEN. The Mechanics Institution at Hanley has a series of
these moulds in hard stoneware.
Amongst manufacturers of white stoneware, we may name
chiefly on the authority of Simeon Shaw, Thomas and John Wedg-
wood, sons of Aaron Wedgwood, Burslem; R. and J. Baddeley
Shelton; Thomas and Joseph Johnson, Lane End; R. Bankes
and John Turner, Stoke; John Barker and Robert Garner
Fenton ; John Adams and John Prince, Lane Delph. All these'
potters, and many others, were making crouch ware and fine white
stoneware during one part or another of the period included
between 1725 and 1775. The improvements in moulds as well as
m the grinding and proportions of the materials of the body of
the ware seem to have been perfected somewhere between 1740
and 1760, and it is to this period that we may attribute the
majority of the finest and most original productions. Not that
rough and poor specimens were wanting, for some of the many
manufactories, said to be sixty in Burslem alone, turned out
productions of an inferior character.
The following is an approximate chronological arrangement of
old Staffordshire work in salt-glazed stoneware :—
Period i. Prior to 1720. Impressed and applied ornaments
on engine-turned vessels : archaic period.
Period ii. 1720 to 1740. Flint introduced into the body:
fine sharp work.
Period hi. 1740 to 1760. Extensive use of coloured enamels
m decorating the salt-glazed surface.
Period iv. 1 760 to 1 780. Prevalent ornamentation of basket
and pierced work ; period of decadence.
The decoration of the ware comprised a great variety
62
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
k
Form.
ot processes, which may be summarized in the following
scheme : —
( Engine-turned lines, bands, &c.
Incised and scratched work.
Applied ornaments cast in moulds previously.
Stamped ornaments.
Slip-cast in metal, pitcher, or plaster moulds.
Pressed or moulded work.
Irregular shreds and shavings of clay applied to
the surface.
/ Drab or ash-body with white clay-wash, partially
cut away, or with applied ornaments in white
and in blue clays.
Zaffre or manganese powdering previous to
glazing.
Coloured enamelling over glazing.
Tin enamelling on blue ground.
Transfer printing over glaze, in red, violet, . or
black.
V Oil gilding and japanning.
Colour. \
One example of the richest of these modes of ornamenting
this ware must suffice. Fig. 45 represents a fine large flask or
bottle, enamelled after a Chinese pattern, with foliage and figures.
To this flask belongs a large bason similarly decorated, both are
in the Schreiber collection.
The Fulham white or greyish-white stoneware, must be
regarded as in one sense the precursor of the Burslem crouch
ware. In date it was certainly earlier : but that the style and
peculiarities of decoration and treatment of Dwight's manufacture,
directly influenced the Staffordshire potters, cannot be affirmed
with certainty. The Staffordshire productions have merits both
in material, in form, and in decoration, which are peculiarly their
own, yet in modelling the human figure they never approach the
PlG. 45- FLASK, WHITE SALT-GLAZED, ENAMELLED IN COLOURS
STAFFORDSHIRE. Schkeiber Collection.
X
WHITE STONEWARE.
63
excellence of the early Fulham pieces. An oriental (in fact a
Chinese) influence was clearly dominant in the majority of the
earlier Burslem specimens, and it continued in force till the
manufacture ceased. Some of the later specimens, notably the
dinner and dessert services of the last period of the manufacture
(1 760-1 780), were directly copied, so far as their embossed orna-
mentation is concerned, from the Japanese stonewares of Kioto
and Awaji. With this oriental tincture were associated certain
elements, of style and treatment, which remind one of the finer
German stonewares of Siegburg and Raren. Yet in spite of this
indebtedness to exotic originals, we may claim for the old white
salt-glazed stoneware of Staffordshire, a high place amongst English
ceramic manufactures. The finer specimens possess much artistic
excellence, and must rank amongst the most original of decorative
English pottery.
On the whole, it is likely that though the Elers did introduce
glazing with salt into Staffordshire, they did not largely practise
the process themselves. Some of the earliest extant pieces of grey
stoneware, presenting a close resemblance in style to the fine red
ware, may have been made by them towards the close of the
seventeenth century. Between 1710 and 17 15 there were in
Burslem six ovens turning out stoneware, in all probability glazed
vy ith salt. Between these dates and the middle of the century.
Nuch advance was made in the quantity and quality of this stone-
ware, and there can be no doubt that the introduction of salt-
glazing into the Staffordshire potteries was the cause of the rapid
^tension of the earthenware manufacture there during the first
n ^lf of the eighteenth century. The commixture of clays, the
Edition of silica and especially of ground flint, the repeated
efforts to improve the colour, texture, hardness, and form of a
Ware w hich at the outset had much to recommend it, all stimulated
farther invention and progress. In the first quarter of the
ei ghteenth century, indeed, this particular manufacture was not
Car ned on with the vigour and to the extent that one might have
k 2
6 4
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE,
expected from our experience of to-day. But still the single
kiln of each maker soon became insufficient to supply the demand,
and so the works were enlarged and more workmen were trained,
until towards the middle of the century the manufacture was
carried on in scores of potworks vying with one another in the
perfection and variety of their products. In immediate succession
to John Philip Elers we meet with the names of Astbury and
Twyford as makers of salt-glaze stoneware. Astbury used Devon
and Dorset clays as well as local materials for his body, adding
afterwards a large proportion of ground flint. The patents of
Thomas Billing in 1722, and of Ralph Shaw in 1732, were
directed towards further improvements in the ware. Dr. Thomas
Wedgwood, of Burslem, was another celebrated potter of that
day ; Aaron Wood, the chief blockcutter of the time, was ap-
prenticed to him in 173 1. It is to be regretted that in very few
cases are we able to identify the works of individual potters, or
to attribute particular patterns to particular factories. When the
ware was most in vogue there seems good reason to conclude
that the popular patterns were copied over and over again, not
only from pieces of Staffordshire make, but also from the pro-
ductions of Chelsea and Bow. Indeed, the finest pieces of
white stoneware, enamelled by Daniel of Cobridge, and by other
.potters who followed his example, were no mean substitutes for
the coloured porcelain which they were intended to imitate.
Fig. 46.— JUG, BROWN STONEWARE, NOTTINGHAM. Willett Collection'.
CHAPTER IX.
NOTTINGHAM STONEWARE.
Its characteristics — Notable Examples.
The manufacture of the brown stoneware, for which Nottingham
became famous about the middle of the eighteenth century, was
begun before the year 1700. A dated posset-pot of that year is
mentioned by LI. Jewitt. Ismail jug (So^j2) in the South Ken-
sington Museum is inscribed in the usual cursive characters, "Nottn.
1703"; it has a ribbed neck and two bodies, the outer casing
being pierced in floral patterns. We engrave a jug of similar form
(fig. 46), with a beautiful design of foliage cut subsequently to the
firing through the glaze ; this is in the Willett collection. Three
later pieces are in Jermyn Street: a christening bowl thirteen
inches across, " Nouember 20, 1726 " ; a large mug with applied
figures in low relief representing country sports, and inscribed,
"Edw. Stark, 1727 " ; a punch-bowl twenty-two inches in diameter,
incised with " Old England for Ever, 17 50"; also a large punch
bowl "Made at Nottingham ye 17th Day of August, a.d. 1771."
Pieces in other collections bear dates between the years 17 12 and
1799. The works were not abandoned until the beginning of
this century.
The Castle Museum at Nottingham possesses several good
examples of this fine brown stoneware. A square 5J-inch tile
with impressed geometrical ornaments is a rare and unusual piece,
Part of a pavement from the house of a former owner of the pot-
works. The notable dated pieces are :— a mug, " Mary Whats,
April the 24th 1749"; a puzzle jug with "G.B., 1755," incised
o6
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
above a floral design somewhat Persian in character ; a jug, " John
and Elizabeth Townend, June 7th, 1760"; a mug dated 1781.
A well decorated brown two-handled cup is in the Weston Park
Museum, Sheffield. The patterns, which are wholly incised,
consist of concentric rings and bands, with a bold encircling
wreath of conventional foliage. The inscription runs thus :
"Ann Goodwin, March 3rd 1747." In the same collection is
another vessel of similar ware, but decorated with bands of
white slip cut through in fine lines to show the dark body
beneath. This piece, with the very fine jug of similar character,
in the possession of Mr. Franks, would be generally given to
Nottingham, but it is not at all unlikely that both specimens are
in reality the work of Astbury of Shelton.
Any notice of Nottingham ware would be very imperfect
without a reference to the " bear " vessels in form of a sitting
bear with a movable head constituting a cup, which were
in common use in beer-houses during the closing years of the
seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth. We
believe these were made in Staffordshire and Derbyshire as
well as Nottingham, but the latter town certainly produced a
considerable number, mostly in the peculiar yellowish-brown
and reddish-brown fine stoneware, which was the chief product
of its potworks ; the blackish and the white stoneware bear jugs
may be attributed to Chesterfield, Brampton, and the Stafford-
shire potteries. The brown bears were sometimes smooth, but
more frequently coated with an immense number of small rough
scraps of clay. (See South Kensington Museum for a fine example
with its stand of the same ware; No. 11 80 '64.)
It is well to state that Nottingham brown ware may be recognised
by its bright rich colour, its remarkably smooth glaze (for salt
glaze), and its admirable potting. These characteristics seem
to have been maintained throughout the whole period of its
manufacture. In substance too it was uniform and thin, while
the mugs and jugs were frequently of quite graceful form.
CHAPTER X.
BRISTOL AND LIVERPOOL DELFT.
Two Delft Works at Bristol— Dated Pieces— Style and Decoration of the
Ware — Liverpool Tiles — Plaques and Bowls.
Earthenware of three different kinds has been traced to a
Bristol origin. The earliest pieces are of a buff ware glazed with
lead and coloured with iron and copper. Fragments only have
been exhumed, and these are portions of large and oddly shaped
vessels with grotesque masks and coarse ornamentation of incised
lines and of bosses. 1 Of the second type of ware a few tygs and
other drinking vessels or fragments of them have been found in
Bristol. These are of dark grey or brown stoneware and very hard :
they can scarcely be earlier than the close of the sixteenth century.
Ihe third sort of earthenware is that which is generally called
delft — a white stanniferous enamel upon an earthenware body.
There were two makers of this ware in Bristol, Richard Frank
on Redcliffe Back, and Joseph Flower. The manufacture was
actively carried on during the middle of the eighteenth century, but
pieces of an ornamental character, either in form or decoration or
both, were turned out as early as 1706 and as late as 1784.
Frank's delft works, founded in all probability during the last
quarter of the seventeenth century, were situated behind the premises
ln RtdclifTe Street, known as Canynge's House. On this site, in
1 Some fragments of large vessels of obviously mediaeval manufacture have
en foun d on the site of the Carmelite Priory, Bristol.
68
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
1869, were found abundant remains of delft ware of Bristol
manufacture — gallipots, ointment pots, jars, jugs, and tazze
suitable for the display of pastry in confectioners' windows. The
body of Frank's ware is of a buff- colour, harder, denser and rather
darker and redder in tint than the body of similar Dutch wares ;
it has about the hardness of fluor spar or 4 0 of the mineralogical
scale. The glaze, or rather the tin enamel, on this ware has a
slight greenish-blue tint and is uniform in texture and colour ; it
is thinner but perhaps superior in opacity to the majority of Dutch
examples. The decoration, on the enamel but under the thin
glaze, was generally of the usual blue tint somewhat dull in colour,
occasionally pieces occur in which there is a border of foliage
enamelled in a pure white upon the greenish-white ground of the
ware — " bianca sopra bianca." A ground of powdered manganese
purple with white medallions bearing designs in blue was another
style sometimes adopted. The decoration on the plates made by
R. Frank is usually based upon Chinese patterns, but in many
instances it has been copied from Dutch examples. A plate
presented to the Jermyn Street collection by Mr. W. Edkins was
painted by his grandfather Michael Edkins, at Richard Frank's
E
pottery; it is inscribed on the back M-;-B, the initials being
1760
those of the painter and his wife. He painted many tiles for fire-
places and for dairies. Frank's pottery was removed in 1777 to
No. 9 Water Lane: in 1784 it was sold to Mr. Joseph Ring.
Delft ware was then out of fashion.
Another maker of delft ware in Bristol was Joseph Flower. The
name of "J. Flower, Potter, No. 2 Quay" occurs in Sketchley's
Bristol Directory for 1775; in 1777 he moved to No. 5, Corn
Street. His delft ware is perhaps thinner and finer than that of
R. Frank, but does not seem to have been manufactured to so
large an extent ; authenticated pieces of his make, now in the
possession of a descendant, are dated from 1741 to T750. His
BRISTOL AND LIVERPOOL DELFT. 69
ware was often decorated with oriental landscapes, foliage and
figures, in much the same way as that of R. Frank. One plate
has a view of the old Hotwell House and the ships and boats on
the Avon ; a dish shows " The taking of Chagre in the West
Indies by Admiral Vernon. ,,
Although a very large number of pieces rf Bristol delft ware
are in existence, it is generally impossible to distinguish those
which were made by R. Frank from those of J. Flower. And
it requires a good deal of practice to discern the differences
between the productions of Bristol and of Liverpool, and we
may add, of Lambeth. However, the election plates
NUGENT ONLY Calvert and Martin
1 754 for Tukesbury
1754
are certainly of Bristol make, and almost certainly by R. Frank.
Other dated pieces of Bristol delft are these :—
P
A round dish, with ornaments in blue, inscribed B M
1706
seven plates inscribed respectively,
D Elizabeth B H JOHN P E
T x H Barness S . E S X PI SAUNDERS J . B F . G
1716 1738 1744 1751 1754 1763 1767
a christening bowl, " Hannah Hopkins, born September 17, new
style, 1752 a tile picture, being a view of St. Mary Redcliffe,
now in the Museum of Practical Geology. This bears the arms of
Bishop Butler, and so its date is approximately ascertained to
belong to his episcopate, 1738-17 50.
Mr. Willett's large picture is composed of seventy-two tiles,
and represents Hogarth's March to FincJiley ; it is probable that
these tiles were painted in 1754. Pairs of tile pictures for the
fireplace, made up of nine tiles apiece, representing a dog and
7 o
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
cat as guardians of the hearth, were not uncommon in Bristol
houses once. The dog, in one example, has the word Bristol
on his collar, with the date 1752.
It must not be supposed that Bristol delft occurs only in the
form of plates, dishes, and tiles. Tea-poys and punch-bowls are
frequently found which may be safely assigned to the factories of
Frank or Flower. Of the former, two examples bore respectively
the inscriptions K . F. W 1722, and U.D 1760; the bowls,
though often bearing mottoes, are rarely dated. They, however,
exhibit a great number of different designs and ornaments, not
only in blue, but also in yellow, red, and manganese purple. The
latter colour is sometimes employed for the outlines of the pat-
tern, and sometimes for the mottled ground—in the latter case
medallions are left, having Chinese landscapes, conventional
ornaments, or flowers, in blue. A fine bowl has a rude figure
of a fox in red inside at the bottom, accompanied by the legend,
" Beware of the Fox," while the outside is covered with sprays
of conventional foliage in blue, red, and yellow ; these sprays are
arranged in a number of small panels.
The bowl we have selected for illustration, Fig. 47, is con-
jecturally assigned to Bristol, partly from the peculiarity of its
material, and partly from an inference drawn from the inscription
it bears. This latter speaks of the tin used for the glaze, as
having been that of "John Udy of Luxillion," (Luxulyan in
Cornwall). Now it seems more likely that the piece was made
at the near and familiar delft works of Bristol than at those of
the distant Liverpool.
It may here be stated that approximate dates may be assigned
to some of the extant specimens of Bristol delft, by noting the
form and fashioning of the pieces. For example, in the case of
plates, those of the earlier period, say 1 706-1 735, resemble their
Dutch prototypes, being without any flange beneath, and having
either simple curved sides and a nearly flat bottom, or a rather
steep sloping ledge, and then a small sharp curve. During the
BRISTOL AND LIVERPOOL DELFT.
7*
second period, 1735-1745, the outer ledge or brim was nearly
level, the circumference was frequently cut or lobed in six
divisions, the area of the central portion was reduced, and a
flange was added beneath. Some intermediate and transitional
forms occur, but about 1755 the final form was reached, which
is seen in the majority of the extant examples, and which closely
resembles that now generally adopted for dinner plates. The
lower outline of a section no longer consists of one unbroken
line, but shows no less than nine members.
The most complete collection ever made of the works of
Bristol delft potters, was destroyed in the Alexandra Palace in
1873. A large number of the specimens there gathered
together, had been obtained from houses in Bristol and
Gloucester, and the neighbourhood of these cities. Mr. H.
Willett and Mr. Franks have some good specimens. Among
Mr. Franks' dated plates of Bristol delft, the following occur: —
P R S 1
W . M F . E October 27 T + M
1711 1721 T735 1753
In the same collection is a tankard of 1765, with a copy of a
coin of Queen Anne painted on the lid ; also a fine bowl, with
W • C
foot marked • . Mr. Willett has a dish of this ware dated
1 7SS
1 761. But the range of dates shown in these examples does
not comprise the entire period of the Bristol manufacture of
Bristol delft. An inventory of stock purchased by Mr. Joseph
Ring, of Messrs. Richard Frank & Son, in 1784, includes an
item of 7/. $s. for " delph ware/' And as the marriage of
one "Thomas Frank, gallipot maker," is recorded in 1697, and
as excavations on the site of his potworks have shown that he
made delft ware, we may trace back this manufacture to the closing
decade of the seventeenth century. But the earliest dated piece
is the dish of 1706 before named; earlier dated pieces must
we think be assigned to Lambeth.
7 2
ENGLISH EAR THENWA RE.
The ware for which Liverpool is most celebrated is delft.
When it was first made there we do not know. The specimens of
the seventeenth century which have been assigned to Liverpool
are not improbably of Lambeth manufacture. We think the
stanniferous enamel was first used at Lambeth, then at Bristol,
and then at Liverpool. As to Staffordshire a difficulty presents
itself, for there seems to have been a short time near the middle
of the seventeenth century when large platters were there made
of rough delft, with coarse coloured paintings of the Temptation
of Eve, and a few other Scripture subjects upon them. Then
there was a gap, not yet filled up, of a century, but finally, delft
ware was re-introduced into the potteries after 1750 to fall again
very quickly into disuse. There are, however, dated pieces near the
beginning of the eighteenth century which we are obliged to assign
to Liverpool from the subjects- upon them, from the evidence
of similar fragments dug up on the sites of the potworks them-
selves, from contemporary notices and memoranda, and from
traditions. In the museum of the Mechanics' Institution at
Hanley there is a Liverpool delft bowl, twenty and a-half inches
across, painted by one John Robinson at Seth Pennington's
pottery, in Shawe's Brow. A similar bowl in -the Jermyn Street
Museum is of the same size (S.9.), Fig. 48. It is painted in
blue with a three-masted man-of-war on the inside : the sea is
green, and there is some red on the flags. The outside is adorned
with powder-barrels, bombs and military trophies. Other bowls
in the same museum may or may not be of Liverpool make :
they bear such inscriptions as " Success to Trade," " Wilkes and
Liberty," " Parliament Bowl, free without Excise, 1736," "Suc-
cess to the Friendship, 17 66.'' When we come to examine
specimens of delft preserved in or near Liverpool itself, we find
ourselves on surer ground. A plaque painted with "a West
prospect of Great Crosby" is dated 17 16. Another plaque is in
old Crosby Church : it bears the date 1722 and the arms of the
Merchant Taylors' Company. Other pieces (plaques, bowls and
■BOWL, DELFT WARE, LIVERPOOL. Museum of Practical Geology.
I
f ;
s I
I
F *G. 49.-TILE, LIVERPOOL DELFT. South Kensington Museum.
No. 27 '74.
!
L
BRISTOL AND LIVERPOOL DELFT,
73
mugs), bear the dates 1728, 1753, 1757, 1758, 1760. Although
it must be conceded that the delft bowls of Liverpool are well
potted, the opaque, whitish enamel evenly spread, and the deco-
ration bold, yet the effect of the whole is hardly satisfactory.
The tin enamel too is decidedly inferior to that of the early
Lambeth specimens. However in one respect Liverpool excelled
all other centres of production in transfer- printing on delft.
This process, first applied by Alderman Jansen to the decoration
of the enamelled objects produced at Battersea, appears to have
been independently worked by John Sadler and Guy Green, both
printers of Liverpool, as early as the year 1750. The surface to
which the print was transferred was an enamelled tile in the one case,
and enamelled metal in the other, but the processes were identical.
The operation was rapid, for the inventors, Sadler and Green,
themselves printed 1200 tiles with different patterns in six hours,
without assistance. These tiles are five inches square, better potted
and harder than the Dutch ones imported at the same time. The
printing was in black or in red : sometimes a little enamel colour,
as green for vases, was subsequently added by hand. The tiles
were employed for lining stoves and walls, and were very popular.
Theatrical characters were frequently represented upon them, as
m the tile from a panel in the possession of the South Kensington
Museum, Fig. 49.
So famous did Sadler and Green's printing on earthenware
become, that Wedgwood himself sent a great quantity of his
Queen's ware to Liverpool to be so decorated. Other Stafford-
shire potters did the same. The works were in Harrington
St reet, at the back of Lord Street. Wedgwood's successors still
continued to have ware printed there so late as 1799. Specimens
of Llver Pool delft printed by Sadler and Green are in the frame
2 7"74 in the South Kensington Museum. Note also the earthen-
Ware ve ssels with printing done at Liverpool upon them. The
te a-pot with a portrait of John Wesley (1466*53) is a well-known
Sample. The cream ware pieces of this kind may, in some
L 2
74 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
instances, have been made in Liverpool potteries, but the
identification is uncertain. The signature of the engravers occurs
on some specimens, thus : —
Sadler, Liverpool. Green, Liverpool.
J. Sadler, Liverpool.
A list of some of the dramatic characters found upon Sadler and
Green's Liverpool tiles is here given : it includes some of those
published in a small volume or album dedicated to David Garrick.
Mrs. Abington as
Mrs. Barry
]VIr. Bensley 99
Mrs. Bulkeley „
Mrs. Cibber
Mr. Foote „
Mr. Garrick „
Mrs. Hartley „
Miss P. Hopkins „
Mr. King >,
Mr. Lee Lewes ,,
Mrs. Lessingham ,
Mr. Macklin ,
Mrs. Mattocks ,
Mr. Moody ,
Mr. Lewis ,
Mr. Smith
Mrs. Ward ,
Mr. Woodward ,
Mrs. Wrighten ,
Mr. Wroughton ,
Mrs. Yates
Miss Younge
Estifania.
Sir Harry Wildair ; Athenais.
Mahomet.
Angelina.
Monimia.
Fondlewife.
Abel Drugger ; Sir John Brute ; Don
John in The Chances.
Lady Jane Grey ; Imoinda.
Lavinia.
Lissardo.
Harlequin.
Ophelia.
Sir Gilbert Wrangle ; Shylock.
, Princess Catherine.
Teague ; Simon in Harlequin's Invasion-
, Hippolitus ; Douglas.
, Lord Townley.
, Rodogune.
, Razor; Petruchio.
, Peggy.
, Barnwell.
, Lady Townley ; Jane Shore.
„ Zara.
CHAPTER XL
WEDGWOOD WARE.
Influence of Josiah Wedgwood on English Ceramics-Queen's Ware-
Egypt.an Black Ware-Jasper Ware-Variegated C
There is a notable difference between the productions of Josiah
Wedgwood and those of his predecessors. Hitherto the potter's
art in England had been essentially English. True, it had re-
ceived from time to time foreign elements, yet it had assimilated
tnem. But no previous potter ever worked upon so large a scale
nor so completely modified the style and the materials of the'
art. Henceforth Wedgwood's improvements and Wedgwood's
patterns and designs were copied far and wide. His improvements
>n the potting or fashioning of his wares, and in their body or
Paste, were very great and perfectly legitimate. So much as this
cannot be sa.d of the artistic value of his work. Accepting and
even encouraging, the prevailing fashion of his day, Wedgwood
adopted the rather shallow conceptions of classic art then in
y ogue. Classic forms stimulated and satisfied his efforts towards
mechanical perfection : classic finish he tried to render by means
°' those fine pastes which he was ever elaborating. But no
amateur of antique gems would accept Wedgwood's copies as
^equate translations of the originals. The lens reveals the
^ughness of grain, the lumpiness of surface and the faults of
contour in the one, while it serves but to bring out the beauty of
7 6 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
the other. Even the Barberini vase, a masterpiece of potting, of
material, of firing, and of every excellence of workmanship, is but
a copy after all. Its shape is inelegant, and the story wh.ch its
ornament was meant to tell ill understood. What labour, what
skill, given to work incapable of naturalisation! But to the
portraits of contemporary celebrities which Wedgwood produced
in jasper and basaltes wares, to his works after Flaxman, and to a
great deal of his "useful" ware, must be accorded the very highest
praise. In a word, Wedgwood was a great potter, but not a great
artist. In the former capacity he influenced favourably the whole
subsequent course of English ceramic industry; less happy in
their results have been his fondness for the antique and his lack of
originality. The "taking" delicacy and finish of his wares in-
duced a number of imitators to copy his copies. Perfection of
material and workmanship displaced the old native picturesque-
ness , vigour was sacrificed to finish, originality to elegance. But
it would be most unfair to the memory of Wedgwood if too much
stress were laid upon this critical view of his methods and style.
The improvements which he effected in the ceramic industry of
the country were too substantial to be seriously compromised by
the want of spontaneity in the artistic character of much of his
choicer ornamental ware. Indeed, the latter formed in reality but
a small proportion of the array of different productions which
emanated from the works of Josiah Wedgwood. His "useful"
and " table " ware it was that made his fortune and influenced the
whole subsequent manufacture of pottery in England. No earthen-
ware, native or foreign, combined so many technical perfections.
Well-ground clays and flint formed the body. The "potting"
was so good that every part and piece was in complete corre-
spondence with every other, while no more material was used than
was necessary to secure solidity. Plate rested perfectly on plate,
lids fitted perfectly to kettles, basons, and tea-pots. The colou'S
of the wares were refined and uniform, the firing complete, the
glaze thin. And the forms of the "useful" ware showed an
WEDGWOOD WARE. 77
exact adaptation to their uses. The spouts and lips of milk-ewers
and jugs and tea-pots permitted of their contents being poured
out with neatness ; the handles could be held ; the lids did not
fall off.
Josiah Wedgwood came of a race of potters. A puzzle jug
made by his great uncle John Wedgwood in 1691 is preserved in
the Jermyn Street collection. Nor was this John Wedgwood (born
1654, died 1705) the first potter of the family who settled at
Burslem, for his grandfather, one Gilbert Wedgwood, was estab-
lished there early in the seventeenth century. Josiah Wedgwood,
the youngest of the large family of Thomas and Mary Wedg-
wood, was born early in July, 1730. He parents were neither
affluent nor poor • they had many influential and some rich re-
lations in Burslem. His school attendance ceased with his
father's death in 1739. In 1744 he was bound apprentice for
five years to his elder brother, Thomas Wedgwood. Owing to an
affection of the knee, Josiah Wedgwood, when between fifteen
and sixteen, had to give up working as a thrower, and then
turned his' attention to other branches of the potter's art: this,
change of occupation in all probability stimulated his inventive
capacity. At the close of his apprenticeship he entered into
partnership with John Harrison and Thomas Alders, the latter a
potter at Cliff Bank, near Stoke. The wares there made were
mottled, cloudy, tortoiseshell, salt-glazed, and shining black.
Scratched ware, that is, salt-glazed white ware with incised lines
filled in with zaffre, was also made at Cliff Bank.
Wedgwood remained in partnership with Harrison and Alders
a very short time, probably not longer than a year. He then
joined Mr. Thomas Wheildon (about 1752), and devoted himself
m part to the work of modelling, but also to the improvement of
the various agate, tortoiseshell, and cauliflower wares then made.
A fine rich green glaze was one of his inventions during his
partnership with Wheildon. When (about the beginning of the
year 1759) Wedgwood established a new business for himself in
7 8 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
premises at Burslem belonging to his cousins John and Thomas
Wedgwood, his works were on a very small scale. But in a year's
time the choiceness and style of the little pieces of various kinds
of ware which he turned out attracted attention and custom to the
rising craftsman. One very much wishes that some of the pieces
which he produced at this time-the relief-tiles for fireplaces for
example— could be recovered and identified. As his business
grew, he effected improvements in the conduct of his manufactory
as well as in the materials and decoration of its products. For
each workman had now his own special work to attend to, and
was no longer everything in turn. The new plan had, however,
its drawbacks, narrowing the knowledge while it increased the
mechanical excellence of the workman; yet its economy was
extremely important in the case of a factory where the proprietor
needed to amass some capital for the further development of his
business. This Wedgwood soon accomplished, gradually per-
fecting the materials, forms, and decorations of the cream-coloured
ware, which afterwards became known as Queen's ware. He also
continually invented new contrivances, and improved the old
apparatus and tools employed in the potworks. The notion
which has been industriously spread by his biographers, that
Wedgwood was a good chemist, and that he applied his know-
ledge of chemistry in the improvement of his wares, is not
correct. What chemistry was known in 1750, had he been con-
versant with it, would not have helped him much in his ceramic
labours. The ordinary acceptation of the meaning of "chem-
istry " in Wedgwood's time, and, we may add, up to the last few
years, was far from exact : for doctors were supposed to have
mastered its theory, and druggists its practice! The trial of
recipes (for bodies, colours, and glazes) gathered from all quarters,
and repeated modifications of the materials and proportions,
constituted Wedgwood's experimental work.
In the year 1766 Wedgwood took into partnership Thomas
Bentley, a Liverpool merchant of good education, artistic tastes,
WEDGWOOD WARE.
79
and polished manners. The partnership extended to an interest
in ornamental wares only. In 1780 Bentley died. Wedgwood
removed in 1769 to his new house and works at the village which
he founded under the name of " Etruria." This place now
contains nearly 5,000 inhabitants : and has a station on the
North Staffordshire Railway. So in nine years from starting in
business on his own account, Wedgwood was enabled not only to
found a large factory, but to build a grand house for himself — a
house which even now has an air of faded magnificence in spite of
neglect, the dinginess of its surroundings, and the smoke-smitten
trees hard by.
In 1790 Wedgwood took his sons John, Josiah, and Thomas,
and his nephew Thomas Byerley, into partnership. In 1793
the firm consisted of Josiah Wedgwood, his son Josiah, and
Byerley. In 1795 Wedgwood died.
The marks on Wedgwood ware, and the signs by which the
fine old productions of Josiah's time may be discriminated from
more recent pieces, must now be given.
The main mark is the name Wedgwood impressed in the paste
before firing. The size of the letters varied much — from £ to ^
of an inch in height. Occasionally the initial letter only
was a capital letter. WEDGWOOD, wedgwood, wedgwood,
Wedgwood, Wedgwood, Wedgwood. During the partnership with
Bentley his name was conjoined with that of Wedgwood in similar
type to the above, thus : ^ BENTLEY An early mark pre "
vious to 1766 consisted of the name Wedgwood with each letter
separately stamped and not exactly in line. An early partner-
ship mark consists of the names in a circle ; in the later ones the
word ETRURIA is added, with an inner and outer ring. The
ttark, JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, with a date under (as Feb. 2,
^05) belongs to the time when the works were carried on by the
son of the founder. In more recent times the firm employed the
simple name WEDGWOOD. The O in the older stamps was
So
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
always wide ; in most of the later ones it is narrower, thus : 0.
The marks WEDGEWOOD, and WEDGWOOD & CO., do not
belong to the Etruria works.
Many small marks, chiefly those of workmen, are found upon
pieces of old Wedgwood ware. Miss Meteyard 3 in her Wedg-
wood Handbook, gives no less than 100 of these — more might
be gathered. H, ^, and 3, occur only upon small fine cameos of
the best time. The inscribed letters W.H. for William Hack-
wood, the modeller, occur upon some portraits, but Wedgwood
suppressed, as far as possible, any indication of their work which
his artists might have wished to placed upon their designs.
As to the quality of old Wedgwood ware, and the differences
between it and the later productions of the same factory, it is
difficult to speak with exactness. Touch and sight afford means
of discrimination which are not easily put into words. There
is a fineness of grain in the original work which results in a dense
ivory-like surface, neither dry and chalky-looking on the one
hand, nor of waxy smoothness on the other ; such distinctions
apply to the so-called jasper-ware bodies of which Josiah
Wedgwood's best known pieces were made. The surface was
neither dull nor shining except where, as on the edges of some
of the smaller cameos, the shanks of seals, and the surface of the
grounds of some imitation stone cameos of several strata, the
lapidary's wheel had been used to give a polish. That polish
revealed the fineness of the grain and the compactness of the
jasper and black basaltes ware, and, it may be added, their
exceeding hardness. Nothing, indeed, is better adapted as a
touchstone for gold than a slab of black basaltes ware ; such a
slab made for this use, and marked wedgwood etruria, is in
the author's possession. Some of the modern pieces of Wedg-
wood ware and many of the productions of Josiah Wedgwood's
contemporaries and immediate successors and imitators can
scarcely be distinguished from the old work except by those
WEDGWOOD WARE.
Si
slight differences of tint, treatment, and finish which demand
ocular comparisons made by experienced connoisseurs.
In the further discussion of examples of the several wares made
by Wedgwood it will be inconvenient to follow the order of his
catalogue (6th edition, 1787) ; a better arrangement of our notes
will result from the consideration of the different "bodies" in
their order of invention or improvement.
1. Cream-coloured ware, or Queen's ware. Wedgwood brought
the white earthenware body, which previously had been for the
most part salt-glazed, to perfection, tinting it of various hues of
cream-colour, saffron and straw. His dinner and dessert services,
as well as tea and coffee sets, were generally made of this ware,
and were often enamelled with well-painted designs of con-
ventional foliage, flowers, &c. The more gorgeous patterns
became very popular on the Continent. Gilding was introduced
sparingly ; later on the pieces were frequently ornamented with
transfer-engravings in black or red, printed by Sadler and Green
of Liverpool. Sometimes the outlines of the ornaments were
printed, the designs being completed in enamel by hand. A
large number of vases and ornamental pieces, as well as some
statuettes, were made in the cream-coloured body, and then
ornamented with various kinds of enamelled decoration. Fig. 50,
a large centre-piece two feet high (G 258, Jermyn Street
collection) is an example of cream ware. When from each arm
was hung a little basket of comfits and fruits, the appearance of the
piece must have been charming. See also the open-work chestnut
baskets and the immense dish 25^ inches across (South Ken-
sington Museum, 248*64) also 3214 '53, 423 '7 2 > 3°43 'S3>
3 5 2 8 '53, 559 '68, 689 '83, in the South Kensington Museum. On
white and cream-coloured ware Wedgwood often applied a gold
lustre (see South Kensington Museum, 168 '74 : also G 286 in the
Jermyn Street collection).
The following memorandum occurs in red enamel on the
back of a large dish of Wedgwood's Queen's ware in the possession
82
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
of Sidney Locock, Esq.: "This dish was made at Etruria by
Messrs. Wedgwood and Bentley, the first year after Messrs.
Wedgwood and Bentley removed from Burslem to Etruria.
Richard Lawton served his apprenticeship at turning with them,
and has had it in his house more than fifty years. It is my
brother William's modelling. It was turned on a hand lathe,
as plates were at that date. I preserve this to show the quality
of common cream ware before the introduction of growan or
Cornwall stone. This body is formed of flint and clay only, the
same as used for salt-glazed ware at that time, and flint and lead
only instead of a salt-glaze, and it is fired in the usual and
accustomed way and manner as usual for glazed tea-pots, tortoise-
shell, mottled, and agate, and cauliflower, &c, &c. Also sand
from the Mole Cop and Baddley Edge was used either in the body
or glaze. N.B. Before flint was introduced they used a certain
proportion of slip for the body in the glaze to prevent crazing,
and to make it bear a stronger fire in the glaze oven. I was the
first person that made use of bone in earthenware when in my
apprenticeship at Mr. Palmer's at Hanley Green.
"Burslem, Sept. 2 6t/i, 1826." "Enoch Wood.
The original memorandum is incorrect in spelling and punctua-
tion ; the obvious mistakes have been rectified in the above
transcript, in which also the abbreviation C n C r has been con-
jecturally expanded into common cream ware. The statement as
to the use of bones in earthenware by Enoch Wood, when an
apprentice of Mr. Palmer of Hanley, is of some interest. I have
proved that bones formed an important constituent of Bow
porcelain (1749 — 1775) ; it is now apparent that to Spode cannot
be given the credit of first employing them even in earthenware.
2. Egyptian black or basaltes ware owes its colour chiefly to
iron. Wedgwood's black ware was much finer in grain and richer
in hue than that made before his day. Seals, plaques, life-size
busts, as well as medallion portraits of " ancients and moderns,
Fig. 51.— LAMP, BLACK EGYPTIAN WARE, WEDGWOOD. Museum of
Practical Geology.
WEDGWOOD WARE.
83
were made in this ware to a very large extent. The vases of
black bas'aites are well known 5 they were often of large size.
Wedgwood made tea and coffee sets in black ware, decorated
with coloured enamels, gilding, or silvering; they are not very
satisfactory in use. This ware needs to be backed or surrounded
by some material of a rich greenish-yellow hue in order that its
beauty may be properly appreciated. Basaltes plaques set in box-
wood form admirable features in fireplace and furniture decoration.
Attention may be drawn to the following specimens of black
ware by Wedgwood in the South Kensington Museum. Busts
(285 '66 to 292 '66) of Zeno, Cicero, Cato, Seneca, Bacon,
Barneveldt, Ben Jonson, and Grotius ; several of these pieces are
about twenty inches high. Figures are numbered 1263 '71 and
1264 '7*. Vases are 131 '78, and 1506 '55, 1409 '55, 278 '66.
In the Jermyn Street collection G 310 to G 328 are mostly fine
pieces of this ware. The lamp Fig. 51 is a good example of
material and modelling. This black ware lent itself to two
further inventions of Wedgwood. One of these was the applica-
tion of unglazed enamel colours to the surface, thus producing an
imitation of the ancient Greek vase paintings ; the other consisted
in the use of applied solid ornaments in the white jasper body in
relief, thus simulating the effect of the rare Roman glass vases of
two strata. Two of Wedgwood's copies of the Portland or Barberini
glass vase belong to the National collection. One in the
Jermyn Street collection (G 342), was obtained from the late
Charles Darwin, F.R.S., a descendant of Josiah Wedgwood.
The other belongs to the Jones Bequest (854 '82). Dr. J. L.
Propert owns a particularly fine copy of this vase. The dry
enamel painting on black ware, which Wedgwood called encaustic
Painting, was mechanically perfect but artistically defective. An
immense vase or crater of this sort is in the Jermyn Street
collection ; it was copied from a Greek vase of the period of
decadence in the British Museum. As a triumph of successful
Potting, this piece, which is thirty-three inches high and eighteen
M
84 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
inches in diameter, is worthy of attention. The very rare bronze
ware made by Wedgwood appears to have been of black basaltes
dusted over, before or after firing, with a metallic bronze powder.
3. Red ware, or Rosso antico, made in perfection by John
Philip Elers, was never successfully produced by Wedgwood.
Neither in quality of colour nor fineness of grain did it equal the
earlier ware made from the same ferruginous clay from Bradwell
Wood. Some of Wedgwood's cameo reliefs in red upon black
(South Kensington Museum 3482 '55 and 1261 '71) are more
satisfactory in effect than those in which the ground is red and
the reliefs black. It is believed that good pieces of this class of
wares were turned out from the Etruria works during the first
decade of the present century. The chocolate ware with black
reliefs, and many similar associations of two unglazed bodies
differing considerably in colour, afford a wide range of effects.
The buff and red ware, and buff and sage green, were often very
finely wrought \ the buff with white reliefs was less characteristic.
Wedgwood used his white, buff, grey and cream-coloured terra-
cotta bodies for some of his plaques, tablets and medallion portraits.
(See among the Wedgwood cameos in Jermyn Street collection No.
195 and in the South Kensington Museum No. 275 '66.) Many
of Wedgwood's early experimental cameos, chiefly copies of seals
and gems, were made in a hard, nearly white or straw-coloured
terra-cotta, sometimes tinted by means of a thin wash of enamel
applied by hand to the background. Between 1776 and 17 86
Wedgwood made many improvements in some of these coloured
terra-cotta bodies, notably in the cane-coloured and bamboo wares
(South Kensington Museum, 1505 '55, a tea-pot).
4. White semi-porcelain, or fine stoneware. This formed one
of Wedgwood's earliest improved bodies. He used it at first m
the plinths of his marbled and variegated vases, and afterwards
for some of the portrait medallions and plaques. It differed from
the white jasper in its pale straw-coloured or greyish hue, and also
in its waxlike smooth surface and subtranslucency : moreover it
WEDGWOOD WARE. ^
contained neither carbonate nor sulphate of baryta— characteristic
and indeed essential constituents of the true white jasper ware, a
subsequent invention. It had a great tendency to warp and crack
in firing.
5. Variegated ware as made by Wedgwood was of two kinds,
one a cream-coloured body, marbled, mottled or spangled with
divers colours upon the surface and under the glaze ; the other
an improved kind of agate ware (see p. 30) in which the coloured
clays in bands, twists, stripes, and waves, constituted the entire
substance of the vase or vessel. By the latter method Wedgwood
produced some choice effects, rivalling and recalling, without
exactly imitating, the appearances presented by many beautiful
natural agates and marbles. Characteristic examples are G 308
and 309 in the Jermyn Street collection, and in the South
Kensington Museum, No. 1452 '53.
The handles of vases in this ware were often covered with
oil gilding; occasionally in some later examples, the whole
surface was delicately veined and spangled with gilding, properly
burnt in, and not merely fixed with japanner's gold size.
6. Jasper ware. This body was the material in which the chief
triumphs of Wedgwood were wrought. Outwardly it resembled
the finest of his white terra-cotta and semi-porcelain bodies. But in
its chemical composition and physical properties it differed notably
from them. One of Wedgwood's early recipes for white jasper
was, in percentages— barytes 57-1 ; clay 28*6 ; flint 9-5 • barium car-
bonate 4 -8. The novelty of these components lies in the barytes
and barium carbonate, which together constitute nearly sixty-two
Parts in the hundred. The white particles of the barytes served
to reflect the colours of the various oxides used as staining
materials for the differently tinted jaspers, while these oxides
themselves apparently combined only with the other constituents
°f the ware. Occasionally a very little cobalt was added even
to tne white jasper ware, in order to neutralise its natural yellowish
hue. By introducing a little Cornish stoen or other felspathic
M 2
86 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
material, the white jasper became less opaque and more waxlike :
while the barytic ingredients, if made to preponderate very largely,
and especially if insufficiently ground, produced a ware having
a dry chalky whiteness. Wedgwood seems to have first called
his new white body " jasper " in 1776, a year or so after its dis-
covery; in the catalogue of 1787 he designated both it and a
very fine waxen white body as " white porcelain biscuits," but
the latter was more easily and cheaply made than the former. It
must be noted that what is called "jasper dip," invented in 1777,
consisted of the white jasper ware with a surface-colouring
produced by a wash of a mixture in which oxide of cobalt or other
metallic oxides formed the chief ingredient After Bentley's
death in 1780 the solid jasper seems to have been disused for
some time — indeed it is rare to find any name but Wedgwood
upon the jasper dip. There are seven colours in jasper ware
besides the white, but solid jasper is found almost exclusively
of a blue tint. The seven colours are — blue of various tints or
degrees of depth, lilac, pink, sage-green, olive-green, yellow,
and black. The yellow is rare; as jasper dip it occurs as the
ground on which figures in blue relief are placed in a few vases,
as solid jasper small quatrefoils are found ornamenting some of
the chequer or diaper patterns on vessels of black or lilac jasper
dip. It is to be noted here that some of the finest jasper medal-
lions and cameos present a curious association of solid jasper with
jasper dip — the base being of a pale blue solid jasper with a deeper
wash of the same colour. Not infrequently a white jasper body
has a wash or dip of one colour in front, and a wash of blue at
the back. It should be remembered that all the surface or ground
behind the figures and other reliefs .in white or coloured grounds
is tinted, and may consequently show through or, as in many
pieces with a black ground, may stain, the thinner parts of the
applied ornaments. Plaques and tablets, and large medallions m
high relief, will often be found to have circular perforations, or
borings, at the back in the thickest parts to facilitate drying, and
■VASE, BLUE AND WHITE JASPER WARE, WEDGWOOD. Museum
ok Practical Geology.
^2 ?
WEDGWOOD WARE.
87
to prevent unequal shrinkage in the kiln. Some of the large fine
jasper ware plaques are stamped in two or even three places with
the maker's name. Let us add here to the criteria of the fine
jasper ware previously given (p. 80), the absence of bubbles and
holes, the flatness of the field, and the uniformity of grain and
surface, without ripples or stringiness.
No conception of the charm of fine. specimens of Wedgwood's
jasper ware can be conveyed by an ordinary woodcut ; the best
photographs we know, both of medallions and vases, are those on
Plates IV., VL, VIII., XIV., XV, of the Liverpool Art Club's
Wedgwood catalogue (1879). The two woodcuts here given
represent a blue and white solid jasper vase (Fig. 52) with
granulated ground (Museum of Practical Geology), and a
pedestal or drum (Fig. 53) of green jasper dip with white
figures (South Kensington Museum), from a design by Flaxman
made in 1782. We also direct attention to the fine specimens
of coloured jasper ware in the South Kensington Museum and
Museum of Practical Geology, the register numbers of which are
here given : —
Plaques, medallions, cameos.
South Kensington Museum, 1488 '55, ion '53, 3506*55,
398 '74.
Museum of Practical Geology, 197 to 214.
Vases.
South Kensington Museum, 3463 '55, 3464 '55, 1421 '55.
Museum of Practical Geology, 339, 340, 342.
Miscellaneous pieces.
South Kensington Museum, 3467 '55, 1525 '55, 383 '54.
To give any notion of the multiplicity of objects in jasper ware
which Wedgwood made, would be absolutely impossible within
the very narrow limits of this little handbook. The books by
Miss Meteyard, and Mr. C. T. Gatty's catalogue (named in our
Bibliographical notes), will furnish all the necessary data for
88
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
connoisseurs and collectors. Merely to describe the general
characters of the classes and sections in which Wedgwood
arranged his cameos, intaglios, tablets, portrait medallions,
statuettes, vases, flower-pots, and miscellaneous productions in
jasper ware, would occupy several pages. But we cannot refrain
from noticing two small groups of pieces in coloured jasper ware,
which concentrate in themselves the chief beauties of this exqui-
site material. The first of these contains the rare oval portrait
medallions in blue and white jasper of Robert Boyle, Benjamin
Franklin, Joseph Priestley, Sir William Hamilton, Sir Joseph
Banks, Dr. D. C. Solander, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke.
These magnificent portraits are in very high relief, while the ovals
are not less than ten and a-quarter inches high by seven and a-half
inches wide — often longer ; very few copies of them survive. The
other group of jasper ware pieces which we commend to our
readers are distinguished for exquisite delicacy and finish. We
refer to the cameo subjects in three colours, or rather in two
colours and white ; these show their beauties to the best advantage
when not of very small size. The " Sale of Cupids " and the " Car
of Aurora," in white on green with blue and white border, or
white on black with green and white border, may be named as
two of the best examples of this group. These pieces should
be about 2§ inches long by i\ inches high, oblong, with the
corners cut off and having the edges polished on the wheel.
A word or two about the origin of Wedgwood's designs may be
suitably inserted here. He began his artistic work in cameos and
intaglios by copying from sulphur, glass, and plaster casts of
engraved gems of antique Roman and Greek origin, and of the
Italian cinque cento. Later on he worked more directly from the
originals themselves. English and foreign draughtsmen and
modellers, such as Hackwood, Flaxman, Bacon, Stubbs, Webber,
Dalmazzoni, Devere, Angelini, and Pacetti, worked for Wedg-
wood, not only in adapting antique designs, but in producing
original works. He also used freely the figures of ancient vases
it ' ' I \ II i
WEDGWOOD WARE. 89
in the volumes by Count Caylus and Sir W. Hamilton. The
Duke of Portland lent him for three years the famous Portland
cameo glass vase, now in the gold ornament room of the British
Museum. The engagement (in 1775) by Wedgwood of Flaxman
to model portrait medallions and plaques of classic subjects was
most fortunate ; the high favour, which these productions obtained
at once, was a tribute no less to the sagacity of the potter than to
the genius of the artist. T Flaxman must be referred the fine
portraits of Dr. Solander, Sir J. Banks, Lord Chatham, Mrs.
Siddons, Captain Cook, Boerhaave, the Queen of Portugal, and
a crowd of others equally good. William Hackwood was also
a successful portrait modeller; his medallions of Wedgwood
and his relations, and of many local celebrities, are evidently
characteristic likenesses. The grand plaque of the sacrifice of
Iphigenia, adapted from a bas-relief on the sarcophagus in which
the Portland vase was found, may be accepted as the work of
Pacetti.
The prices of Wedgwood ware have fluctuated greatly. At the
sale which took place in 1781, after Bentley's death, very few
pieces realised anything like the warehouse prices. For instance,
a suite of "tablet," "frieze," and "blocks," in blue and white
jasper for a mantelpiece realised 4/. 10s. instead of 12/. 19^.
Ten times the latter sum would probably not purchase such a
set nowadays. Take the case of Wedgwood's masterpiece, the
Portland vase. Not more than fifty copies, probably fewer, were
issued during Wedgwood's lifetime, at prices varying from twenty-
five to fifty guineas apiece. A copy in the Tulk sale of 1849 was
bought in for 20/. Prices have since advanced, an example in
the Purnell collection having realised 173/. in 1872. The largest
pnce recently given for an old Wedgwood jasper vase was 700
guineas. This piece was of white on black ; the subject on the
v ase was the Apotheosis of Homer by Fiaxman ; the cover was
surmounted by a Pegasus ; the square pedestal bore reliefs repre-
senting sacrifices to Flora and to Cupid, and was decorated with
9 o
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
white griffins at the corners ; the whole stood twenty-five inches in
height. Dr. Sibson, the owner, had purchased it eighteen months
previous to his death for 400 guineas. This fine example
is now in the collection of Sir D. C. Marjoribanks. The largest
blue and white jasper plaque or tablet known, twenty-six inches
long by eleven inches high, was sold for 415/. at Christies' in
May 1880; it was made in 1789. The little cameos described
on page 88 were probably sold originally at prices not exceeding
seven to twelve shillings ; they now fetch from five to ten guineas.
Neither in Wedgwood's lifetime nor at any time since have pieces^
in black basaltes ware realised good prices, or been subject to
much fluctuation in market value.
The following collections of old Wedgwood ware maybe named
as important : —
Jtf% % Bartlett, Liverpool. Mayer Collection, Liverpool.
Isaac Falcke, London. Sir D. C. Marjoribanks.
A. W. Franks, London. Miss M. Preston, Marlborough.
Dr. J. Braxton Hicks, London. Dr. J. L. Propert, London.
Sir J. D. Hooker, Kew. T. S. Walker, Liverpool.
The De la Rue, Carruthers, Barlow, Bohn, Sibson, and several
other good collections of old Wedgwood ware have been sold by
auction during the last few years.
CHAPTER XII.
TURNER AND OTHER IMITATORS OF WEDGWOOD.
John Turner— William Adams— Palmer— Neale— Elijah Mayer -Hollins—
Spode — Wood — Davenport.
Wedgwood's successes provoked the rivalry of his brother
potters. Not content with improving their own productions they
deliberately copied his. Some of them indeed maintained an
honourable attitude in this matter, but the majority of the artistic
productions of the Potteries district which have survived to our
day from the period 1760 — 1800, reveal something more than the
influence and stimulus of Josiah Wedgwood's improvements in
material, workmanship and design. Did he select a graceful classic
vase for copying in black basaltes, in agate ware, in cream ware, in
blue and white jasper, a crowd of imitators did something more than
make the same selection. For the most part, they did not go directly
to the sources whence Wedgwood drew his designs, but they secured
early copies of Wedgwood's own pieces and set to work to copy
them, form, ornament, body and all. The cameos, the seals, and
the " useful" ware were all pirated. Some of the imitators ex-
celled in one line, some in another, but not one of them achieved
a success at once so varied and so complete as that of Wedgwood,
although it must be owned that some of them produced several
excellent kinds of ware. Perhaps John Turner, who worked in
Lane End from 1762 until his death in 1786, may be regarded as
having very nearly rivalled Wedgwood in the quality of his blue
and white jasper. It is however easily distinguishable, both bv
its texture, which is more porcellanous, and by its colour, which
02
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
either has a greenish or a purplish hue in it. In fineness
of grain it left nothing to be desired. The following pieces
of this ware are characteristic; three vases, South Kensington
Museum, i474'55> r 475 '55 ? '476 '55 J Jermyn Street collection,
a vase, G 408; a dish, G 4090; a cup and saucer, G 412 a.
The majority of Turner's productions are stamped TURNER,
but the above-named cup and saucer bear the mark TURNER
& CO. Possibly this is the mark of Turner and Abbott, or of
John Turner's sons, John and William, who continued the manu-
facture of jasper and other wares until the year 1803. Turner's
black basaltes or Egyptian ware is of very fine quality j so also is
his cane-coloured or bamboo ware, and his cream-coloured stone-
ware or semi-porcelain. Of the former, note in the Jermyn Street
collection, G 4°5"7 ; of the cream-coloured stoneware observe
the fine tureen 10 '74, in the South Kensington Museum, and in
the Jermyn Street collection the characteristic half-gallon jug
(G 409), with neck and handle coated with chocolate-coloured
glaze, shown in Fig. 54. Such jugs, of all sizes, were frequently
mounted in silver, and are of a considerable degree of perfection in
their own way. A fine series of these jugs was in the Alexandra
Palace collection, with many wine-coolers, mugs, and vases
of the same body and style. Turner made some good busts in
his cream-coloured fine stoneware — these were generally mounted
on plinths of black basaltes — " Egyptian black." Turner was not
a mere plagiarist of Wedgwood, many of his productions having
marked elements of originality.
The name of Turner will remind the connoisseur of English
earthenware of at least three contemporary potters, whose works
are not always easily discriminated from those of the chief
follower of Wedgwood. These three names are Adams, Palmer,
Neale. We do not know much about Adams, except from the
wares stamped with his name. However, in the year 1787, the
name of William Adams & Co., Burslem, is found in TunniclirT's
Topographical Survey as a firm of potters. William Adams
—JUG, WHITE STONEWARE, TURNER. Museum of Practical Geology.
IMITATORS OF WEDGWOOD.
appears to have been a pupil and friend of Wedgwood himself.
Miss Meteyard {Wedgwood's Life, ii. 515), states that Adams re-
moved to Tunstall after Wedgwood's death, and that he died
about' 1804 or 1805, the works being closed soon after. Shaw
affirms that a son of W. Adams, Benjamin Adams, made jasper
ware at Tunstall in 1800. If so, he may have been in partner-
ship with his father at that time. Ward {Stoke-upon- Trent, p.
505), tells us that the firm of William Adams and Sons had in
1 843 four separate works of earthenware and china in Stoke, and
one pottery at Cliff Bank ; he adds that the head of the firm died
in 1829. The blue and white jasper ware of Adams, in the form
of vases, drums for candelabra, spill-vases, and tea sets, though
generally slightly inferior in sharpness to the similar ware by
Wedgwood, comes nearer to it in colour and texture than that of
Turner. A quite characteristic piece of Adams' ware is the large
blue jug in the Jermyn Street collection (G 447) decorated with
four white figures in relief representing the four seasons. The mark
on this ware is usually ADAMS impressed : ADAMS & CO.
sometimes occurs. Black basaltes, cream ware, and ordinary
white earthenware were made by Adams.
Palmer was an unscrupulous imitator of Wedgwood's vases,
securing new patterns as soon as they appeared in the warehouse
in Newport Street, London. Palmer of Hanley was in friendly
relations and ultimately in partnership with one Neale, and
together they imitated not only the black vases, but those painted
with dry encaustic colours. It seems that another pirate, J.
Voyez (see page 100) sometimes worked for Palmer, and sometimes
on his own account. He went so far as to forge the names
Wedgwood and Bentley upon the intaglio seals which he made.
A very few of Palmer's productions are now identifiable, probably
in part because they were of inferior merit, and in part because he
left them unmarked. Some seals with H.P., or PALMER, upon
them, and half a dozen black vases with PALMER, HANLEY,
have come under the writer's notice. (See South Kensington
• N
94
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE,
Museum, 355*70 and 354*70; and 1475,8,9, 1484 to i486,
1488, 1493, 1495 '7°') When in 1776 Neale and Palmer united in
partnership the firm appears to have used the marks impressed, of
NEALE & CO. and NEALE 6- CO. Eleven years later we
know that the partners were Neale and Wilson, whose names
appear occasionally upon pieces of glazed white and cream ware.
J. NEALE, HANLEY, occurs occasionally upon early pieces,
chiefly black vases, made by Neale. In fact Neale executed some
fine pieces in black basaltes ware, witness the set of large oval
portrait medallions (12 \ inches by 10 inches), dispersed some
years ago at Messrs. Sotheby's rooms. One of these, W. Penn, is
G 402 in the Jermyn Street collection. In the same collection
are specimens of the jasper ware, G 397,8,9, and 4030; and
green glazed ware with gilding, G 400,1 made by Neale and Co.
There is a coloured bust of the Rev. George Whitefield and a
fine marbled or blue-sprinkled vase by the same potter in the
South Kensington Museum, 83 '74 and 1614 '71 (Fig. 55). The
sprinkled marbling touched with gold on a cream body was one of
Neale's most successful styles of decoration.
Elijah Mayer, of Hanley, produced many good pieces in the
style of Wedgwood. His unglazed buff and cane-coloured wares,
often decorated with delicate lines and patterns in blue and green
enamel are of singularly fine texture; they are usually marked
with an impressed stamp of E. Mayer. Fig. 56 represents a fine
buff ware vase in the Jermyn Street collection j it is decorated
with blue and green enamel. Other Staffordshire potters of the
same school were —
BIRCH.
CYPLES.
EASTWOOD.
HEATH & BAGNELL.
HEATH, WARBURTON & CO.
HOLLINS, T. &■ J.
HOLLINS, S.
KEELING, A.
KEELING, E.
LOCKETT, T. & J.
MYATT.
PRATT.
SHORTHOSE & CO.
STEEL.
■HBBHBHHHHHHHHH
1 tyl ifi '''Mil, I
■ 'I ! ii ! ,
I 1 , j
■
( A )
V , ART .,/
IMITATORS OF WEDGWOOD.
95
Most of these potters are represented in the Jermyn Street
collection, but their productions scarcely call for particular de-
scription, although the rich red-brown fine stoneware of Hollins
(South Kensington Museum, 8413 '73), really deserves more than
a passing allusion. But we must give some particulars concern-
ing the productions of two potteries, those of Spode and of Wood,
on account of their excellence and variety.
The first Josiah Spode was apprenticed to Wheildon, with whom
Josiah Wedgwood was for a short time in partnership. He was a
successful manufacturer, making large quantities of blue-printed,
cream-coloured and white ware, the latter frequently decorated
with designs in transfer-printing, filled in with enamel colours by
hand. His dessert-services and tea-ware are generally now es-
teemed next to those of Wedgwood ; they bear ornamentation of
a somewhat oriental character. The gilding on Spode's wares
is of great solidity and smoothness, quite the best of his day.
Spode made black basaltes and jasper ware ; also many varieties
of coloured stoneware with white reliefs. Some of these pieces
are copies of works by Wedgwood. (Compare the amorini on
the Spode jug, South Kensington Museum, 8 '78, with those on the
Wedgwood medallion, South Kensington Museum, 3506 '55. The
first J. Spode died in 1797. He was succeeded by his son Josiah
whom he had some time before taken into partnership. He improved
the various manufactures of the establishment, adding, about the
year 1800, the production of a true soft porcelain. The mark on all
Spode ware is the name impressed or printed or both— SPODE.
Some observations on the works of the several potters belong-
ing to the family of Wood of Burslem will be found in the
chapter on Staffordshire figures (pp. 99-102). The first of the family
whose productions are known was Ralph Wood, the grandfather
of Enoch Wood, to whom a further reference will presently be
made. Some of the pieces by Ralph Wood bear the impressed
mark, Ra. WOOD, Burslem. Amongst these is a bust of Washing-
ton in cream-coloured ware (Jermyn Street collection, G 367), an
9 6
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
obelisk of granite ware (G 364), and the well-modelled figures of
Old Age, a Shepherd and Lamb, and the Vicar and Moses, which
we have described on page 99. Ralph Wood's granite or
porphyry ware was made by attaching to the earthenware surface
to be decorated a number of small fragments of differently-
coloured pastes, smoothing the surface, and glazing the whole. It
resembles a polished piece of porphyritic rock with embedded
crystals. Ralph Wood's son was Aaron Wood, who was appren-
ticed to Dr. T. Wedgwood \ the son of Aaron was Enoch Wood,
famous not only as an enterprising potter, but as an enthusiastic
and intelligent collector of all Staffordshire wares. Had it not
been for his knowledge and perseverance the subject of the de-
velopment of English earthenware would have been more obscure
than it is. Ward tells us (Stoke- upon Trent, 261 et seq.), that
Enoch Wood collected the " early and later specimens of the
fictile art, from the rude butter-pot of Charles II. 's time to the
highly adorned vase of modern days." His collection remained
intact until 1835, when no less than 182 of the choicest pieces
were forwarded by Mr. Wood to the King of Saxony ; they remain
in the Dresden Museum. The rest of the collection has been
dispersed, but happily a large part of it was acquired by the
nation, and is now divided between the museums of Edinburgh,
Dublin, and London. The Jermyn Street collection and that of
the South Kensington Museum have been enriched by many
specimens from the Enoch Wood collection.
Enoch Wood commenced business on his own account in Burslem
in the year 1783; in 1790 he was joined by James Caldwell.
The mark Wood and Caldwell belongs to the period 1790— 1818.
Prior to 1790 the mark, impressed, was E. WOOD; after 1818 it
became ENOCH WOOD & SONS. The busts and statuettes
produced by the Woods are better known than their other produc-
tions j however, they made tolerable blue and white jasper and
black basaltes ware. Enoch Wood is said to have modelled the
bust of John Wesley in the summer of 1781.
IMITATORS OF WEDGWOOD. 97
The name of a third potter came into prominence towards
the close of the eighteenth century. John Davenport com-
menced working at Longport in 1794. An impressed upright
anchor with DAVENPORT or Davenport above it, and occa-
sionally LONGPORT below, also impressed, are common
marks of Davenport and his successors. Sometimes these
marks are used singly : sometimes they are printed or painted
in red.
We may mention as names occurring on various pieces of
Staffordshire ware made towards the close of the eighteenth, and
in the early years of the nineteenth century, those which are
arranged in the list below. Specimens illustrating the work of
these potters will be found in the Jermyn Street collection.
Bott & Co.
Harley
Ridgway
J. Clementson.
Lakin & Poole
Riley
Clews
Mason
Rogers
Cookson & Harding
Mayer & Newbold
Salt
Green
Meir
Stevenson
Hackwood
Mohr & Smith
Walton
Harding
Moseley
Wilson
Miles Mason, of Lane Delph near Newcastle-under-Lyme,
became known for his so-called ironstone china, a strong well-
baked earthenware of which powdered iron slag formed an im-
portant constituent. He made some very large pieces, including
posts for four-post bedsteads, and such immense punch-bowls, or
cisterns for goldfish, as the piece in the South Kensington Museum
(54 '7°), which is nineteen inches in diameter. Mason's ironstone
china patent is dated July 23, 1813, so that his ware belongs to a
more recent period than that to which this handbook is devoted.
Mason's potting was good, but the artistic value of his productions
slender.
Attention may be here called to a large piece of pottery in the
9 8
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE
Jermyn Street collection (G 450), which is believed to be the
work of one Thomas Miles. It is a model of a wine-cask in
cream-coloured ware. The cask is enamelled brown, the hoop
being oil-gilt; it is supported by four small figures of children
kneeling at the corners of a table or stand : there is unusual
merit in the piece.
GROUP, "THE VICAR AND MOSES," R. WOOD. South Kensington
Museum. No. 92 '74.
Ill
=• 58.-GROUP, "THE PARSON AND CLERK," STAFFORDSHIRE. South
Kensington Museum. No. 298 '69.
* , ART
CHAPTER XIII.
STAFFORDSHIRE FIGURES.
Wedgwood— Voyez— Ralph Wood— Walton— Salt.
The great majority of these Staffordshire figures, statuettes,
and groups are unmarked. However, it is frequently easy from
the few marked specimens of characteristic types which have
been recorded to assign many pieces to one or other of some
nine or ten potters, Ralph Wood, Wedgwood, Voyez, Neale and
Co., Enoch W 7 ood, Wood and Caldwell, Bott and Co., Wilson,
Lakin and Poole, and Walton. The order is pretty nearly a
chronological one, and, it may be added, the order of merit, the
last being the worst. Of the work of Ralph Wood of Burslem,
grandfather of the well-known Enoch Wood, the group of the
Vicar and Moses (Fig. 57) is an excellent example. The humour
of the piece is well rendered, and the colouring is quiet ; it was
very popular, and it was reproduced by R. Wood's successors, for
many years with stronger colouring and weaker modelling until
all its merits were completely lost. The group representing the
Vicar and his Clerk returning home after a drunken bout (Fig.
58) is rather later in date than the piece shown in Fig. 57.
Probably it is by Aaron Wood, the son of Ralph Wood. An
authentic example of Ralph Wood's work is the bust of
Washington in the Jermyn Street collection (No. G 367). In the
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
South Kensington Museum also there is a marked figure (103,
'74) "Old Age." Of the busts and figures by Josiah Wedgwood
the earlier examples in glazed and enamelled earthenware alone
claim notice here : doubtless he abandoned the manufacture of
these when the greater artistic capabilities of the jasper and
basalt bodies became obvious to him. Nevertheless many large
marked and unmarked busts and figures of Josiah Wedgwood's
manufacture are extant, some of them being of considerable size
— two feet or more in height. Examples in the Jermyn Street
collection are— a female bust " Sadness " (G 260), which bears the
usual impressed stamp, WEDGWOOD, and is twenty-two inches
high; and an unmarked bust of the Madonna (G 377), probably
from an Italian model : this is seventeen inches high. In the South
Kensington collection the specimen of the Madonna and Child
(Fig. 59), though unmarked, may probably be assigned to Wedg-
wood. It possesses some merit in modelling, but the colouring
is not of refined quality. Mr. Willett's figure of Alderman
W. Beckford (Jig. 60) is also in all likelihood an early work of
Wedgwood. The large statuette of Fortitude, in the South
Kensington Museum, also belongs here (Fig. 61).
The best-known work of J. Voyez is the jug with figures
modelled in high relief, of which one of the many existing copies
is in the Jermyn Street collection, another at South Kensington
(100 '74). It is dated 1788 and signed J. Voyez, the modeller's,
not the manufacturer's name. A copy once in the author's
collection bore the initials R. M. A. in addition to the modeller's
name and the date. Other pieces by Voyez are — a plaque with
three grooms drinking, an empty cask serving as a table ; and
a triple match-holder, formed as a tree-stem on which an owl
is perched, with boy and girl, lambs and dog at base, eleven
inches high. This piece was once at Strawberry Hill: it and
the plaque were in the Alexandra Palace collection. The
peculiar colour of the body of all these pieces, the modelling,
the colouring, and the absence of glaze from some of the
■ ■ in
Fig. 60.-STATUETTE, W. BECKFORD, STAFFORDSHIRE. Willett
Collection.
c 1
V
STAFFORDSHIRE FIGURES.
101
surfaces seem characteristic of Voyez's work, and enable one
to refer to the same origin some other statuettes displaying the
same characteristics. Yet Josiah Wedgwood's earliest pieces and
some of Ralph Wood's cannot always be discriminated from the
work of Voyez : probably both these potters employed Voyez.
Many Staffordshire figures were but earthenware imitations of
the finer productions in porcelain of Chelsea and Derby, and
even of foreign factories. Occasionally these imitations 'were
excellent in modelling as well as in material and colouring. We
have seen admirable unmarked earthenware copies of the Derby
group of "The Tithe Pig," and of some of the statuettes made
at Chelsea representing the popular celebrities of the day.
Besides statuettes, groups of figures, busts and plaques with
reliefs, a good many animals were modelled by the Staffordshire
potters in white earthenware enamelled, and in cream-coloured
"are. Some of the most effective of these were the small
covered vessels (perhaps used at the breakfast-table for eggs),
representing pigeons, hens, and plovers. In the Jermyn Street
collection (G 207) is a characteristic example.
It may be useful to note some of those Staffordshire statuettes
Vhlch dis P la y hi gher finish and better modelling than was usual
"th these chimney-piece ornaments of the latter part of the
e 'ghteenth century : —
Peace, a female figure with torch inverted on a trophy of
ltm s. Si inches.
Autumn, a female with lapful of fruit. 8£ inches.
Fire, a female with blazing brazier on pedestal. 8 inches.
Iythe Pig, group of three figures. 7 inches.
Lost Piece, a woman with a broom. 8f inches.
Venus, with dove in right hand.
Diana, drawing an arrow from quiver at back. 1 1£ inches.
Broken Eggs, a boy with a basket of eggs. 5$ inches.
G >RL with apron full of flowers. 7J inches.
102
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
The Vicar and Moses.— A pulpit and clerk's desk inscribed
in front " The Vicar and Moses," and stamped beneath Ra. Wood,
Burslem.
Shepherd, with sheep on his shoulder, dog at his feet, and
tree background ; partly oil-gilt. 9 inches.
Bavarian Broom Girl, richly coloured and touched with
gold. 6£ inches.
Match Girl, with bundle of sulphur-dipped matches in each
hand. 4^ inches.
-STATUETTE, " FORTITUDE." STAFFORDSHIRE. South Kensington
Museum. No. 52*74.
( ®m$ )
CHAPTER XIV.
LEEDS AND OTHER YORKSHIRE POTTERIES.
Leeds — Rockingham — Don — Ferrybridge— Mexborough.
The potworks from which the celebrated cream-coloured ware
of Leeds was issued were established sometime about 1758 or
1760, by two brothers of the name of Green. The firm was
Humble, Green and Co. in 1775, and Hartley, Greens and Co. in
1783, if not earlier ; in 1825, Samuel Wainwright and Co. ; in 1832,
Leeds Pottery Co.; in 1840, Stephen and James Chappell, and
afterwards Warburton & Britton. The earliest manufacture is
said to have been a black ware; it is also stated that, after a
period of intermission, the black ware was again made at Leeds
about the year 1800. The bowl in black basaltes with figures in
relief (South Kensington Museum, 222 '69) can scarcely be so
early as 1760, nor so late as 1800, but being marked LEEDS
POTTERY is no doubt an example of the kind of black ware
which was made by Hartley, Greens and Co. in emulation of
Wedgwood's basaltes. The catalogue issued by the Leeds Pottery
at several different dates makes no mention of any other ware but
" Queen's or Cream-colour'd Earthen-Ware," although it describes
some of the articles as " enamel'd, Printed or Ornamented with
Gold to any Pattern, also with Coats of Arms, Cyphers, Land-
scapes, &c. &c." This catalogue, issued in 1786, in 1794, and in
1 8 14, contains forty-two plates, representing 184 different designs,
io 4 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
beginning with a " terrine," and closing with a " Cross with Holy
Water Cup." Many of the pieces represented are of considerable
merit, large size, and complicated design. The centrepieces for
the dinner-table, the candelabra and the tureens, form an im-
portant series : some of them are in the architectural style of the
brothers Adam. Many of the pieces show flutings, gadrooning,
leafage, and the double-twisted and foliated handles, which are
also often associated with the work of Ring, the Bristol potter ;
but the most notable feature of the greater number of the pieces
(to which such ornament could be applied) consists of stamped
perforations, generally arranged in geometrical patterns. These
openings are usually of the rice-grain form, and are cut with
great sharpness and accuracy. The same kind of work, but with
openings filled with glaze, is seen upon certain Persian and
Chinese wares ; the Leeds potters may have taken the suggestion
from an oriental source. Vessels in the form of melons and
five-necked flower-vases occur not infrequently amongst the older
pieces of Leeds ware. Fig. 62 represents a characteristic piece
of perforated queen's ware from the Jermyn Street collection.
Fig. 63 represents a white piece of old Leeds ware — "AIR."
A large statuette, "Grief at an Urn/' is in Dr. Diamond's
collection : it is enamelled and oil-gilt.
The most usual tint of the Leeds ware is a pale cream colour
of great uniformity and constancy, but now and then this tint
verges upon buff, and sometimes it is very pale. The body of
the ware was, however, never white, being made of tobacco-pipe
clay from Wortley, near Leeds, ground flints, Poole clay, and
Devon or Cornwall china-clay : the yellow colour was only in part
due to the lead-glaze. A good deal of Leeds pottery was decorated
with enamel-colours — green, red, tan, yellow, and lilac of quiet
quality being favourite tints. The ornaments in colour were not
unusually of a somewhat conventional type, although flowers,
birds, and insects were sometimes introduced, treated in a
naturalistic style, and, it must be owned, very badly drawn.
Fig. 62.— DISH, CREAM WARE OF LEEDS. Museum of Practical Geology.
mm
V/j ART ,
-FIGURE, "AIR," LEEDS WARE. Schreiber Collection,
LEEDS AND OTHER YORKSHIRE POTTERIES. 105
Transfer printing in red, purple, and black is found upon some
Leeds ware. It is doubtful whether any salt-glazed ware was
made at Leeds, although the patterns of some salt-glazed Stafford-
shire pieces are identical with those of some in the Leeds pattern-
book. It is strange to notice how perversely, in the auction
catalogues of to-day, and in the labels of private and public
collections, the white salt-glazed ware made in Staffordshire is
almost invariably set down as Leeds ware. In order to dis-
criminate the modern mark and the fabric of Leeds ware from
those of the earlier and better time, the recent specimen labelled
R 46 in the Jermyn Street collection should be studied. There
is a fine suite of early examples, forty or so in number, in that
collection, amongst which note specially a group of granite on
cream ware, R 41 to R 45 : in the South Kensington Museum
there are thirteen pieces.
The Leeds Pottery must have enjoyed a very large measure of
success, for about the year 1800 the annual sales amounted to
something like 30,000/.
The Rockingham Pottery took its name from the owner of the
estate on which it was situated, Charles, Marquis of Rockingham.
The works were at Swinton, near Rotherham, in Yorkshire. On
Swinton Common various beds of clay existed, some coarse and
some fine and white. These were employed for common bricks, tiles,
and firebricks only, from 1745, until about the year 1765, when
some ornamental ware of a rough sort began to be made. It was
not, however, until 1788, when Messrs. Thomas Bingley and Co.
worked the potteries, that the ware began to acquire a reputation
for its superior finish. The names of Brameld and Green then
appear in connection with Rockingham ware, John Green being a
Partner in the Leeds Pottery : Greens, Bingley and Co., Swinton
Pottery, used the same price lists as the Leeds Pottery. A little
later the works seem to have become completely identified with
those of Hartley, Greens and Co., of Leeds. They were making
io6 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
about 1796 Nankin blue, tortoiseshell, Egyptian black, and what
they called 4 'brown china." This is the famous Rockingham
ware, which has been imitated but not equalled in many other
English potworks. It is of a very rich purplish brown colour,
like the pigment known as madder brown. The colour is in the
glaze, the ware or body being of the usual cream-colour. In the
eld pieces of true " Rockingham " the colour is not flat and uni-
form but delicately varied,' often deepening towards the lower part
of the tea- or chocolate- pot : in fact the colour " throbs." This
colour is due to manganese containing a little iron.
This ware was made of good quality and hue from about 1788
until the year 1806 or thereabouts, the later specimens, especially
the so-called Calogan teapots (opening beneath) marked Brameld,
being heavier in substance and poorer in quality of colour than
the earlier and the unmarked pieces. During the Brameld period
1807 to 1827, or even until the closing of the works as a manu-
factory in 1843, much useful and ornamental ware, in a somewhat
gaudy and rococo style, was turned out from the works. Messrs.
Brameld from 1820 onwards made porcelain as well as earthen-
ware, and apart from the matter of taste, certainly succeeded in
producing a sound ware, well enamelled and richly gilt. The
earthenware dishes and plates (see Jermyn Street collection,
M 12), with a spray of some flower enamelled in the centre, the
botanical name being given in red script on the back, are amongst
the most satisfactory productions of the Brameld period. They
sometimes bear the name BRAMELD impressed ; the painter was
one Collinson, and the date 1810—1815. Other marks on earthen-
ware are ROCKINGHAM and Rockingham Works, Brameld.
A good plaque marked with ROCKINGHAM impressed is in
the writer's possession. It is of black basaltes, with an amorino in re-
lief in red ware. We have seen several very large earthenware vases
of Brameld's manufacture made to represent the leaves of a large
waterside plant; they were of rather striking design, while the
BRBBBBBSHH
LEEDS AND OTHER YORKSHIRE POTTERIES. i*j
colou ring; in three different green hues, was cleverly nonaged.
Rather early vases of Rockingham ware occur having a black-
glazed surface with oil-gilding.
The success of the Leeds Pottery led to the establishment of a
pottery near the canal at Swinton. It was founded about r 79 o by
John Green of Leeds. The ware was chiefly cream-coloured
much ike Leeds ware; marbled ware and a white earthenware'
with blue or black transfer-printing were also made at the Don
PO™ T 1 " USCd ^ D ° n P0 " ery in red SC ^ > °ON
POTTERY; and GREEN
DON POTTERY.
Dr. Diamond has a saucer of white ware with a buff wash, and
a landscape, painted in black. I„ the Jermyn Street collection
are three specimens of Don Pottery ware, cream-coloured with
perforations.
At Castleford, situated at the junction of the Aire and Calder
and about two miles from Pontefract, a pottery was established
about 1790, by David Dunderdale. D. D. & CO., Castleford
impressed, is the usual mark when any was used. Cream ware
was made there, but the factory is best known by the tea ware of
a smooth semi-porcelain or whitish stoneware with raised orna-
ments and blue enamel edgings; these belong to the beginning
of the present century.
At Ferrybridge, near Nottingley, about four miles from Ponte-
fract a pottery was established in 1792. At first the firm was
romlmson and Co., but in , 79 6, having taken as a partner
Ralph Wedgwood, a cousin of Josiah Wedgwood, the name
WEDGWOOD & CO. was adopted. This mark impressed
was the usual one on the ware made at Ferrybridge, although the
name of the place was sometimes used. The only production of
the Ferrybridge Pottery worth notice is the large group, no less
than 16} inches high, of two amorini struggling for a quiver of
arrows (Jermyn Street collection, R 55).
I
ioS ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Very little is known of a pottery established at Mexborough,
near Doncaster, by one John Reed. Specimens of Queen's ware
with beaded edges and decorated with enamel paintings (often
of butterflies) have been traced to the Mexboro' works: dates
of 1773, 1795, &c., occur on these.
A notice of Place's ware made at the Manor House, York,
will be found on page 45.
1
CHAPTER XV.
SOME MINOR POTTERIES.
Ring's Bristol Ware - Brislington Lustre - Hounslow - Jackfield -
Herculaneum-Mortlake— Newcastle— Sunderland-Swansea.
A fine, thin, sharply-cut, and neatly-turned cream-coloured
ware was made from 1786 onwards by J. Ring at Bristol
in his Water Lane works. He engaged a potter from Shelton
of the name of Anthony Hassells, who had been in business
there (a John Hassells was still working a factory at Shelton
in the following year). Hassells brought workmen, moulds,
and his stock of ware to Bristol with him ; no wonder that it
is not easy to distinguish the wares made with his assistance
at Bristol from those of Staffordshire. Still it will be noticed that
Ring's cream ware is very richly coloured, not in the body, but in
the yellow glaze, thus differing from the similar wares of Stafford-
shire and Leeds, which were covered with a nearly white glaze.
An enameller in the Water Lane Pottery, Bristol, achieved
considerable reputation for his flower-painting, in a style half
naturalistic, half conventional. This was William Fifield, born
1777, died 1857. His name or his initials appears upon many
pieces of late Bristol white earthenware. Small barrels with
coloured hoops and a band of flowers are quite characteristic of
the Bristol works and Fifield's painting. They generally bear the
initials of the persons for whom they were made, and a date \ the
earliest we have seen is dated 1819.
p 2
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
The rough copper-lustre ware made at Brisiington, four miles
from Bristol, by Richard Frank and his son demands a passing
notice. It was obviously intended for cottage use, soap-trays,
small plates, and baking dishes, occurring most frequently amongst
its products. The lustre, produced by copper and its suboxide,
was first rate, but the ornamental painting, if such it can be
called, was almost inarticulate, though some of the designs on
Hispano-Moorish lustred ware probably served as copies. The
glaze or enamel of the Brisiington ware is thin, uneven, and pale
buff in colour, much inferior to the deep creamy tint of the
Spanish ware. The works were closed in 1789.
In the Jermyn Street collection is a small soap-tray (L 40) of
Brisiington lustre-ware ; the museum at Bristol has a very fine and
large specimen— a dish fourteen inches across, having on the back
a rude monogram of the maker's name — FRANK.
At Railshead Creek, Isleworth, a small pottery was founded by
Joseph Shore of Worcester, about the year 1760: another and
later proprietor of the works was one Goulding. The occurrence
of the mark S. & G. upon some well-modelled pieces of terra-
cotta, similar to those traditionally affirmed to have been made
at Isleworth, seems to confirm the notion of these letters being
the initials of Shore and Goulding, although it is not known
that these persons were at any time joint owners of the works.
A classic vase, marked as above, of fine red terra-cotta with
figures of Hope and Fate in relief, is No. X 23, in the Jermyn
Street collection : a somewhat similar specimen in red and buff is
in the Schreiber collection: both pieces are not earlier than
the close of the eighteenth century, and they may be later.
Dr. Diamond possesses a tea-jar inscribed with the word
Hounslow and the date 1796 upon it. It is of rude make, and
might have been assigned to a century earlier had there been no
date upon it. It is of whitish clay with red slip dots covered
with the usual yellow lead glaze. The decoration, though archaic,
is good— a figure of a hen surmounts this piece. "Welsh
SOME MINOR POTTERIES.
in
dishes were made at Hounslow ; the manufactory was subsequently
transferred to Mold in Wales. It is said that the Isleworth
factory (see above) was transferred in 1825 to Hounslow, but that
the works there were closed two years or so subsequently.
The only Salopian earthenware that claims notice here is that
believed to have been made at Jackfield, near Thursfleld, about
1760-1775. It is of ordinary red clay coated with a thick and
brilliant black glaze, and often ornamented with oil-gilding.
Sometimes it was painted in oil-colours with groups of flowers";
very rarely enamels properly burnt in occur on pieces of the ware.'
Jugs and tea-ware are almost the only productions attributed to
Jackfield. The latter was usually covered with raised ornaments
of vine-leaves and grapes, the covered pieces being surmounted
by a bird. A difficulty arises about the origin of these bird-pieces,
for precisely the same figure is found on the covers of vessels of
white salt-glazed ware of Burslem manufacture. In the absence
of marks the problem must remain unsolved : (see Jermyn Street
collection, O 1 to O 3 a). Jackfield was also the seat of another
pottery, that founded in 1780 by John Rose. This factory, which
was afterwards transferred to Coalport, on the opposite side of the
Severn, was chiefly occupied in the production of the well-known
Salopian porcelain, but there is no doubt that some white ware,
both blue painted and printed, was made at Mr. Rose's works.
Marks found on earthenware plates, dishes, tea-ware, and pickle-
trays, are— S, and C, in blue under the glaze, and SALOPIAN
impressed. The character of the earthenware made at Jackfield,
Caughley, Coalport, and Coalbrookdale, was like that of the
porcelain of the same factories, which will be discussed in the
second part of this handbook.
Besides delft ware, discussed in another chapter, cream-coloured
ware, white ware, salt-glazed ware, and tortoiseshell ware, were
made at Liverpool. The difficulty of attributing unmarked
specimens, say of transfer-printed cream ware, to Liverpool,
simply because they bear the name of J. Sadler, is obvious, for
112
ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
we know that many potters sent their plain ware to Liverpool to
be printed. To learn what was made there is, however, of little
importance, for there is no reason for supposing that the earthen-
wares of Liverpool were distinguished by any special artistic
merits. The transfer prints were, however, generally excellent,
whether on delft or on other bodies. Examples are a pint mug
(Jermyn Street collection, S 7) with the Bucks Arms, and a tea-pot
(Jermyn Street collection, S 8 ; South Kensington Museum,
1466 '53) with a portrait of John Wesley. A cup, saucer, plate,
and mug in the South Kensington Museum afford further examples
of the same character.
There was, however, one pottery at Liverpool, the productions
of which were generally marked. This was started in 1793-4 at
Toxteth Park,, on the south shore of the Mersey, by Richard
Abbey and one Graham — the former had been apprenticed to
John Sadler the engraver. In 1796 the works, passing into
the hands of Messrs. Worthington, Humble, and Holland, were
enlarged and named Herculaneum. Queen's ware, rather duller
than that of Wedgwood, and less yellow than that of Leeds, was
made in considerable quantities. Terra-cotta, black basaltes,
green-glazed ware, and blue printed, and also painted, white
earthenware, were likewise produced at Herculaneum. The name,
impressed in capital letters, appears upon the ware in some cases.
The bird known as the liver, the crest of Liverpool, is a late mark,
1 833-1 836. That the Herculaneum pottery sometimes turned out
specimens of high quality may be gathered from the bust of
Admiral Lord Duncan, in a kind of tinted semi-porcelain be-
longing to the Schreiber collection (Fig. 64).
It would seem that there were two potworks at Mortlake in
Surrey during the latter half of the eighteenth century. In one
of these, founded about 1752 by William Sanders, delft and
earthenware were made ; this factory was still carried on in 1792
by the son of the founder, but in 181 1 the owners were Wagstafi
and Co. Two specimens (80 '66, 81 '66) of Sanders' ware, re-
SOME MINOR POTTERIES.
"3
moved from the old pottery, are in the South Kensington Museum ;
one is a punch-bowl, twenty-one inches across and twelve and
a-half inches high, of earthenware covered with white tin enamel,
and painted with flowers, medallions, and marks in blue; the other
is a panel of twelve tiles of similar ware, with a landscape in blue.
The second Mortlake pottery is represented in the Jermyn Street
Museum by two specimens (X 19 and X 20) of drab stoneware,
ornamented with hunting and other scenes in low relief. One of
the pieces is marked with Kishere, Mortlake, impressed. Other
marks on Mortlake stoneware are Kishere, and Kishere's Pottery,
Mortlake, Surrey. Mr. Joseph Kishere's potwork was still in
existence in 181 1. The Mortlake stoneware is of fair quality, but
presents no feature of artistic value.
Collectors of English earthenware are constantly meeting with
plaited strap dessert baskets, sometimes unmarked, sometimes
with the name of Wedgwood, and often with names of potters
known to have been at work in the Staffordshire Potteries district
during the period 1775-1825. But other names also occur, such
as Sewell and Donkin, Fell and Co., and St. Anthony. These
belong to potteries in the neighbourhood of Sunderland and
Newcastle. The pieces that bear these names are inferior in style
and finish to the similar wares of Staffordshire and Leeds, but
there are some statuettes, some cream-coloured and white ware
mugs and jugs, with transfer prints of the " Bridge over the Wear,"
and some " frog-mugs," which are found in most collections, and
deserve attention. The statuettes are well modelled and potted,
but the effect is often spoilt by vulgar colouring, and especially
by crude attempts at marbling on the bases and pedestals. A
very coarse kind of gold-purple lustre most inartistically smeared
upon many of the Sunderland and Newcastle wares often enables
one to identify the place of their manufacture ; many of the mugs
and jugs with transfer prints are daubed in this way. The mugs
with models of frogs attached to the interior (Jermyn Street
collection, T 3 and T 4) were made at Leeds as well as at
ii 4 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Newcastle; the mug being full, say of milk, did not reveal its
ugly denizen until a part of its contents had been drunk. The
view of the Iron Bridge over the Wear, begun in 1793 and
finished in 1796, was engraved by Edward Barker (see Jermyn
Street collection, T 5 and T 9).
The following is a list of the chief marks found on pieces of
earthenware from the potteries now under review, with the places
where they were made, and the date of the establishment of the
several potworks : —
SEWELL. SEWELLS & DONKTN. SEWELLS & CO.
Made at St. Anthony's near Newcastle. 1780 ?
MOORE & CO. Made at Southwick, Sunderland. 1803.
FELL. FELL, NEWCASTLE. Made at St. Peters, Newcastle.
1817.
SCOTT. Made at Southwick, Sunderland. 1789.
DIXON, AUSTIN & CO., SUNDERLAND. Made at
Sunderland. 1800.
J. PHILLIPS, HYLTON POTTERY. At Hylton near
Sunderla?id.
W. S. & CO.'S, WEDGWOOD. Made at Stockton-on-Tees by
William Smith Co.
There were about five-and-twenty potteries on the Tyne, the
Wear and the Tees, twenty years ago, producing earthenware
of the annual value of 190,000/. The seven potworks named
above by no means exhaust the list of those which were founded
during the latter part of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth century. Some of these were started as early as 173°
(Gateshead), 1755 (Newbottle), and 1762 (Hylton); but it is
impossible to identify their several productions, which are not
likely to have possessed any artistic merit.
We know but little of the Swansea potworks until about the
year 1790, when, under the management of Mr. G. Haynes, they
I k;. 65.— VASE, SWANSEA WARE. Museum of Practical Geology.
I
SOME MINOR POTTERIES.
adopted the title of Cambrian Pottery. Both before and after
the extension of the works which then took place their chief pro-
ductions were much like those of Staffordshire, including various
table services and mantelpiece figures in enamelled white and
cream-coloured ware. The mark is usually in the form of italic
capitals of somewhat flourishing style, generally painted or gilt ;
sometimes the words— Cambrian Pottery, or CAMBRIAN im
POTTERY
pressed, or G. H. & Co., are used. The statuettes often have a
chocolate or orange line painted on the pedestal or plinth, although
this is not a certain or constant sign by any means. But it was in
the year 1802 that the Swansea works produced a quite character-
istic style of decoration on the ware. Mr. L. W. Dillwyn having
then purchased the works employed Mr. W. W. Young, a draughts-
man who had illustrated his works on natural history, to ornament
the u opaque china " with careful coloured drawings of shells,
butterflies, and birds. In Dr. Diamond's collection there is a
beautiful tea-pot of white ware having a bluish glaze, with two
panels of shells reserved on a ground of marbled blue and gold ;
this piece is marked beneath, CAMBRIAN POTTERY, in gold.
Our Fig. 65 represents a similar marbled blue ground, but without
gilding ; it is marked as above in brown enamel, and is labelled
P 2 in the Jermyn Street collection. In the same collection are
a number of other pieces with birds or butterflies exquisitely
painted ; one of the best of them is the sugar-bason with five
species of butterflies on the outside, their names being given
inside. Dessert dishes and plates painted with single flowers and
birds, recumbent figures of Antony and of Cleopatra in black
basaltes, imitations of Etruscan vases in red and black, buff ware
unglazed with figures in relief, are amongst the productions of the
Swansea works during the early years of the present century.
Amongst the marks found on such pieces are —
OPAQUE PORCELAIN DILLWYN & CO.
SWANSEA DILLWYN'S ETRUSCAN WARE
1 16 ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
Not until 1 8 14 was porcelain made at Swansea.
At Yarmouth there was an enamelling kiln worked by an artist
of the name of Absolon towards the close of the eighteenth and
commencement of the nineteenth century. From the mark of an
arrow impressed found on many of the pieces signed by Absolon,
it was assumed that he was a manufacturer as well as a decorator
of earthenware. But although we do not consider that the arrow
mark has been definitely traced to any known pottery, we feel
sure that it did not belong to any works at Yarmouth. Indeed
Absolon obtained his plain ware from several factories, as
Wedgwood, Wigan Pottery, Turner. The pieces decorated by
Absolon were usually dishes and plates, with brown or gilt rims,
and a flower in the centre ; the botanical name of the flower
was generally enamelled in red or brown cursive letters on
the back of the piece (see Jermyn Street collection, V 2 to
V 7). There is a strong resemblance between the plates and
dishes decorated by Absolon and those made and painted
at Swansea.
Small statuettes impressed with an arrow seem to have been
decorated by Absolon; he also used the platinum lustre in some
of his ornaments.
There will always be a large number of unclassified pieces in
any collection of English earthenwares. Some specimens of this
sort have been already named in the chapter on Staffordshire
figures; many examples of jugs and mugs with subjects relating
to agriculture, commerce, social customs, and politics, might be
described ; of these Mr. Willett has a fine series at Brighton. We
cannot refrain from quoting a few of the most characteristic of the
inscriptions found upon his specimens :—
A little health A little wealth
A little House and Fredom
And at the end a little friend
And little cause to need him.
SOME MINOR POTTERIES. n 7
Have Communion with few
Be familiar with one
Deal Justly with all
Speak Evil of none.
Wm. Fuller.
1781.
Thomas Swift.
A jug of Ale
A merry Song
A Funny Tale
But not too long.
1779.
Money to him
Who has spirit to use it,
And life to him
Who has courage to lose it.
Success to the Lover
And Honour to the Brave ;
Health to the Sick
And Freedom to the Slave.
Rd. Oulton
1779.
It must be owned that the forms and decorations of these
inscribed pieces are less meritorious than the verses. However,
if the style of these unclassified jugs and mugs of the period
1775— 1800 be more prosaic than their inscriptions, there is
another class of vessels of similar use, against which the same
objection cannot be brought. These are wager or puzzle jugs and
cups, once great favourites in village inns. They were made at
least as early as the seventeenth century, and at the beginning of
Represent were still being produced. Mr. Solon and Mr. Willett
1 1 8 ENGLISH EAR THEN WARE.
possess some characteristic examples j others are in the museums
of South Kensington and Jermyn Street. Amongst the specimens
in the latter are (G 219 and Y 8) which are dated respectively
1 69 1 and 1684. These tantalising vessels, though not always
equally complex, have generally some features in common. In
spite of their many spouts, a perforated neck usually prevented
the abstraction of their contents in the ordinary way. But a
secret passage for the liquor up the hollow handle and through
one spout or nozzle afforded the means of sucking out the
contents. Of course, all other spouts and a small concealed hole
under the top of the handle had to be closed by the fingers
judiciously applied during the imbibing process. The inscriptions
found on some of these puzzle jugs usually relate to the difficulty
of getting at their contents : the following is an example written
in "scratch blue," on a salt-glazed jug, formerly in the author's
collection : —
From Mother Earth I claim my birth,
I'm made a Joke for man,
But now I'm here, fill'd with good cheer,
Come, taste me if you can.
INDEX.
INDEX.
PAGE
Absolon, enameller 116
Adams, potter 93
Agate ware 30, 85
Anchor, Davenport mark . . . 97
Anglo-Saxon pottery 9
Astbury, J., potter 51
Astbury, T., potter 51
Babylonian glazes 2
Barberini vase . 89
Barytes in jasper ware .... 85
Basaltes or Egyptian black. .82, 103
Bear-jugs . 66
Bellarmines 16
Bentley, T., 78
Bingley & Co 105
Block moulds . 59
Bott & Co., potters 97
Bones in earthenware 82
Bramelds, potters 105
Brass moulds 59
Brislington lustred ware . . . no
Bristol delft 67, 70
British pottery, ancient .... 5
Byerley, T., potter 79
C mark of Caughley
Cadogan tea-pots .
Caldwell, potter .
Cambrian pottery
Cameos
Castleford pottery
Castor ware . . .
Cauliflower ware .
Chinese porcelain
Claret pots . . .
Ill
106
96
"5
86
107
7
33
3
36
PAGE
Clementson, potter 97
Clews, potter 97
Clifton, potter 46
Coalbrookdale works in
Coalport works in
Cockpit Hill pottery 27
Cookson and Harding, potters . 97
Costrels 13
Cream ware 81
Davenport ware 97
D.D. & Co., Castleford mark. . 107
Delft ware 35 , 67, 72
Dillwyn & Co 115
Dixon, Austin & Co., potters . 114
Don pottery 107
Donkin, potter 113
Doulton ware 41
Dunderdale & Co 107
D wight of Fulham 43
Eastwood, potter 94
Egyptian enamels 2
Elers, J. P. , potter 47
Elizabethan pottery 16
Enamels 2
Encaustic tiles, mediaeval ... 12
English wares 19
Etruria 79
Ffxl, potter 114
Ferrybridge pottery 107
Fifield, W., Bristol enameller . 109
Flemish stonewares 15
Flints in earthenware 54
122
INDEX.
PAGE
Flower, J., delft potter . . .67
Form dishes 26
Frank, R., delft potter .... 67
Frog mugs 114
Fulham pottery 43
German stoneware 15
Glass, T., potter 25
Glazes 2
Granite ware 105
Greek vases 2
Greens, potters 73, 97, 103
Gres de Flandres 15
Hackwood, modeller ... 89, 97
Hamme, J. A. van, potter ... 35
Harding, potter 97
Harley, potter 97
Hartley, Greens & Co 103
Hassells, potter 109
Heath, potter 94
Herculaneum pottery 112
Hollins, S., potter 95
Hollins, T. & J., potters ... 94
Hounslow potteiy no
Hylton pottery 114
Ironstone china 97
Isleworth pottery no
Jackfield pottery ...... HI
Jansen, Alderman 73
Jasper ware 85
Johnson, T., potter 25
PAGE
Marbled ware 28, 85
Mason, potter 97
Mayer, E., potter 94
Mayer & Newbold, potters . . 97
Mediaeval pottery 10
Mediaeval tiles 12
Meir, potter 97
Mexborough pottery 108
Miles, potter 98
Mohr & Smith, potters .... 97
Moore & Co., potters ..... 114
Mortlake pottery 112
Moulds for stoneware 58
Neale & Co., potters .... 94
Neale & Wilson, potters .... 94
Newcastle potteries 113
New Forest Roman pottery . . 8
Nottingham Museum 65
Nottingham stoneware .... 65
Onyx ware 85
Ornaments on stoneware ... 60
Palmer, potter 82, 93
Persian glazes 2
Phillips, potter 114
Pill slabs 39
Place's ware 45
Plaster moulds ........ 59
Portland vase 76, 89
Posset-pots 20
Pratt, potter 94
Puzzle jugs 40, 117
Queen's ware 81
Kishere, Mortlake potter. . . 113
Lakin & Poole, potters ... 97
Lambeth delft 35
Leeds ware catalogue 103
Leeds pottery 103
Littler s stoneware 58
Liverpool delft 72
Liverpool pottery 72, 1 1 1
Longport ware 97
Lustred ware of Brislington . . no
Red lustrous ware ...... 84
Rich, W., potter ...... 25
Ridgway, potter 97
Riley, potter 97
Ring, potter 109
Rockingham pottery 105
Rogers, potter 97
Romano-British pottery .... 7
Rose, potter in
Sack-pots 3 6
Sadler of Liverpool 73
INDEX.
PAGE
Salopian ware 1 1 1
Salt, potter 97
Salt-glazed ware . . . 15, 41, 53, 65
Salt-glazing . / , 16, 17, 49, 53, 63
Samianware 2, 7
Sanders, Mortlake potter . . . 112
Sans, T., potter 25
Sans, W., potter , . 25
Scott, potter 114
Semiporcelain 84, 107
Sewells & Donkin, potters . . . 113
Shaw, potter 52, 64
Sheffield Museum 66
Shore & Goulding no
Simpson, R., potter 25
Smith & Co., potters 114
Solon, Mr. L., collection . 31, 51, 55
Spode, J., potter 112
Staffordshire figures 99
Staffordshire potteries .... 24, 75
Steatite or soapstone 19
Steel, potter 94
Stevenson, potter 97
Stoneware 43
Stoneware, enamelled 58
Stoneware, white 53
Sunderland pottery 113
Swansea pottery 115
Swinton pottery 105
Talor, W., potter 25
Taylor, G., potter 25
Tea-pots, salt-glazed 58
Tessellated ware 31
Tickenhall ware 27
Tiles, Liverpool delft 74
Tiles, mediaeval 12
Tiles, stoneware 65
Tin enamel 18, 36, 67, 72
Tithe pig 101
1 oad mugs .........113
Toft, Ralph, potter ...... 25
Toft, Thomas, potter 24
Tombstones of pottery .... 28
Tortoiseshell ware 32
Tudor pottery
Turner, J., potter gi
Turnor, Ralph, potter .... 25
Twyford, potter c 2
Tygs, old English 20, 23
Tyne potteries
Udy, name on bowl 70
Unclassified wares n6
Upchurch Roman pottery ... 8
Variegated wares .... 29, 85
Verses on jugs, &c n6
Vicar and Moses 99
Voyez, J., modeller 100
Walton, potter 97
Wedgwood, Josiah . 75—90, 99, 100
Wedgwood & Co 107
Wedgwood ware, old & new . . 80
Wheildon, T., potter . . 32, 34, 77
Wilson, potter 97
Willett, Mr. H.,;collection .20, 31, 55
Wine-pots of Lambeth .... 36
Wood, Enoch, potter . . . . 96, 99
Wood, Ralph, potter . . 31, 95, 99
Wood & Caldwell, potters ... 99
Wright, J., potter 25
Wrotham ware 23
Yarmouth kiln 116
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